BIOLOGY Lecture Notes - Genetic Drift, Allele Frequency
Document Summary
Explain what is genetic drift and discuss some examples of genetic drift that affect the human population. Genetic drift is the tendency within small interbreeding populations for heterozygous gene pairs to become homozygous for one allele or the other by chance rather than by selection. This is more visible and has a drastic effect in small populations. There are 2 types of genetic drift, which includes the founder effect and bottleneck effect. In addition to natural selection and mutation, genetic drift is another factor that brings changes in the gene frequency. Here are some examples of genetic drift affect human population. Let us think of a case of a population of 100 individuals which is a very small population, of whom 95are of "o" blood group and the rest of them are of "b" blood group. Because of several factors like accident, illness, non availability of mating partners the individuals of b blood group may be gradually eliminated.
