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Question: pingelap is a tiny island in the pacific ocean that...

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ters of the male survivor on Pingelap, who were carriers for Three color blindness, moved to the nearby island of Mokil. This new island was even smaller and had fewer people. How would this event change the frequency of color blindess in the Mokil population? Is this an example of founder effect or bottleneck? Explain. Some Pingelap citizens were transplanted to a small town on yet a third larger island, the capital of this island group. What factors do you think affected the frequency of color blindness on this island? Would you expect the frequency of the color-blind allele to be the same on this island as it is on Pingelap? Explain. 2. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by a genetic mutation resulting in defective proteins in secretory cells, mainly in the epithelial lining of the respiratory tract. The one in every 2,000 Caucasian babies who has the disease is homozygous for the recessive mutant. Although medical treatment is becoming more effective, in the past, most children with CF died before their teens. About 20 Caucasians in 2,000 are carriers of the trait, having one mutant and one normal allele, but they do not develop the disease. According to rules of population genetics, the fre- quency of the homozygous recessive genotype should be rarer than it is. What is one possible explanation for the unusually high frequency of this allele in Caucasian populations? 3. In the following figure, the frequency of dark forms of the peppered moth is shown for populations in northwestern England. Describe the changes in dark moth frequency from 1970 to 2000. Do these populations appear to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium? Explain.


Pingelap is a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean that is part of the Federated States of Micronesia. In 1774 a typhoon devastated the island and of the 500 people who inhabited the island, only 20 survived. One male survivor was heterozygous for a rare type of congenital color blindness. After four generations, some children were born with complete color blindness and hypersensitivity to light due to defective cones (achromatopsia). The islands remained isolated for over 150 years. Now there are about 3,000 Pingelap descendants, including those on a nearby island and in a small town on a third island. The frequency of individuals who are homozygous recessive and have the disease is 5%, and another 30% is heterozygous carriers. This compares to the average of 1% carriers for the human population at large.


1. Explain the conditions that are responsible for these differences in genetic frequencies for the Pingelap population and the general human population.


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