Question

In studying the gene pool of a population, you find that 21% of the population exhibits the recessive trait for eye color and the other 79% of the population exhibits the dominant trait. The dominant allele has complete dominance over the recessive allele. How would you use this information to solve for the frequency of the recessive allele?

Answer 1

In order to solve this problem we use these formula:
p2 + 2pq + q2 = 1p + q = 1p = % dominant allele in the population
q = % recessive allele in the population
p2 = % homozygous dominant individuals
q2 = % homozygous recessive individuals
2pq = % heterozygous individualsFrom the given, we haveq2 = 21%Simply taking the square root,q = 4.58%