Abstract
The Hardy-Weinberg law is a formulation of the relationship between the frequencies of genes in a population and frequencies of genotypes. The basic model describes the simplest nontrivial case, i.e. one autosomal locus with two alleles in a randomly mating (panmictic) diploid population in which nothing occurs to change the frequency of the two alleles. This means that the population is infinitely large (or at least large enough to eliminate the effects of chance) and that factors such as mutation, selection, and migration have no effect on gene frequency. The Hardy-Weinberg law states that if allele A has a frequency of p, and allele a a frequency of q, then after one generation of random mating the population will consist of the genotypes AA, Aa and aa in the frequencies p2, 2pq and q2, respectively, and furthermore that these frequencies will be maintained in further generations as long as the basic conditions hold. Such a population is said to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. We can see that p2 or q2 represents the probability that two gametes both carrying the same allele (A or a) will unite at fertilization.
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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Graf, U., van Schaik, N., Würgler, F.E. (1992). Population Genetics. In: Drosophila Genetics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76805-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76805-7_6
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