Today we learned about genetics in a population, and the Hardy-Weinberg equations. We did an activity where everyone was given four cards. Two of the cards has an A in capital, and the other has an a in lowercase. Later on, everyone was put together in a spot, and we're supposed to do a type of mating dance with the music and keep walking to different and random spots. When the music stops, everyone stops moving, and began picking one card with the closest one to him or her. After both persons finished picking twice, the person has to switch the other two cards to the same cards as the two cards he picked (AA, Aa, aa), and the music starts again. The activity stops after 5 times.
The activity was a demonstration of the Hardy-Weinberg equations. So in a population, each member is either evident in the presence of a dominant allele, with homozygous condition (AA), or heterozygous condition (Aa), or it has a recessive allele, with homozygous recessive genes (aa).
The percentage of all the conditions in the population can be calculated.
If p=the frequency of the dominant allele, q=the frequency of the recessive allele
Then p+q=1, and the population would be p^2+2pq+q^2=1, while p^2=AA, 2pq=Aa, and q^2=aa
Also, if the following conditions are met, the percentage of the conditions within the population will remain constant for all generations:
1. The population is large
2. Mating is random
3. There is no mutation for the alleles
4. No immigration or emigration occurs
5. There is no selection.
- Andy Liu '15
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