Chapter 5: Problem 24
Calculus For Biology and Medicine (Calculus for Life Sciences Series) 3
Classical Model of Viability Selection Consider a population of diploid organisms (i.e., each individual carries two copies of each chromosome). Genes reside on chromosomes, and we call the location of a gene on a chromosome a locus. Different versions of the same gene are called alleles. Let us examine the case of one locus with two possible alleles, A1 and A2. Since the individuals are diploid, the following types, called genotypes, may occur: A1A1, A1A2, and A2A2 (where A1A2 and A2A1 are considered to be equivalent). If two parents mate and produce an offspring, the offspring receives one gene from each parent. If mating is random, then we can imagine all genes being put into one big gene pool from which we choose two genes at random. If we assume that the frequency of A1 in the population is p and the frequency of A2 is q = 1 p, then the combination A1A1 is picked with probability p2, the combination A1A2 with probability 2pq (the factor 2 appears because A1 can come from either the father or the mother), and the combination A2A2 with probability q2. We assume that the survival chances of offspring depend on their genotypes. We define the quantities w11, w12, and w22 to describe the differential survival chances of the types A1A1, A1A2, and A2A2, respectively. The ratio A1A1:A1A2:A2A2 among adults is given by p2w11:2pqw12 :q2w22 The average fitness of this population is defined as w = p2w11 + 2pqw12 + q2w22 We will investigate the preceding function. Since q = 1 p, w is a function of p only; specifically, w(p) = p2w11 + 2p(1 p)w12 + (1 p)2w22 for 0 p 1.We consider the following three cases: (i) Directional selection: w11 > w12 > w22 (ii) Overdominance: w12 > w11,w22 (iii) Underdominance: w12 < w11,w22 (a) Show that w(p) = p2(w11 2w12 + w22) + 2p(w12 w22) + w22 and graph w(p) for each of the three cases, where we choose the parameters as follows: (i) w11 = 1,w12 = 0.7,w22 = 0.3 (ii) w11 = 0.7,w12 = 1,w22 = 0.3 (iii) w11 = 1,w12 = 0.3,w22 = 0.7 (b) Show that dw dp = 2p(w11 2w12 + w22) + 2(w12 w22) (c) Find the global maximum of w(p) in each of the three cases considered in (a). (Note that the global maximum may occur at the boundary of the domain of w.) (d) We can show that under a certain mating scheme the gene frequencies change until w reaches its global maximum. Assume that this is the case, and state what the equilibrium frequency will be for each of the three cases considered in (a).
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