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Modern Genetic Analysis Chapter 17. Population and Evolutionary Genetics
Solved Problem

2. | About 70 percent of all white North Americans can taste the chemical phenylthiocarbamide, and the remainder cannot. The ability to taste is determined by the dominant allele T, and the inability to taste is determined by the recessive allele t. If the population is assumed to be in HardyWeinberg equilibrium, what are the genotypic and allelic frequencies in this population? See answer

| Solution Because 70 percent are tasters (T / T), 30 percent must be nontasters (t / t). This homozygous recessive frequency is equal to q2; so, to obtain q, we simply take the square root of 0.30: Because p + q = 1 we can write Now we can calculate See question

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