Question

A tropical medicine specialist studies malaria resistance in two countries. The scientist finds an allele of a particular gene that results in malaria resistance when heterozygous. The allele is at very high frequency in both countries. Oddly, in one country there is very high linkage disequilibrium with nearby genes, while in the other country there is linkage equilibrium. What might explain these findings

Answer 1

Answer:

Population structure due to the geographic distances that separate both countries

Explanation:

Linkage disequilibrium (LD) can be defined as a non-random association between different alleles (loci) observed in a population. The loci are in LD due to the observed frequencies are statistically higher or lower than it is expected if these nucleotide sequences were independent. LD may be due to different factors which include non-random mating, recombination, genetic drift and population structure.