Question

Explain how mutations, natural selection and genetic drift affect Hardy Weinberg equilibrium.

Answer 1

Natural selection occurs when one allele (or combination of alleles of differences) makes an organism more or less fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment. If an allele reduces fitness, its frequencies tend to drop from one generation to the next.

The evolutionary path of a given gene (i.e) how its allele’s change in frequency in the population across generation, may result from several evolutionary mechanisms acting at once. For example, one gene’s allele frequencies might be modified by both gene flow and genetic drift, for another gene, mutation may produce a new allele, that is favoured by natural selection.

Genetic drift / Sewall Wright Effect is a mechanism of evolution in which allele frequencies of a population change over generation due to chance (sampling error). Genetic drift occurs in all population sizes, but its effects are strong in a small population. It may result in a loss of some alleles (including beneficial ones) and fixation of other alleles. Genetic drift can have major effects, when the population is reduced in size by natural disaster due to bottle neck effect or when a small group of population splits from the main population to form a new colony due to founder’s effect.

Although mutation is the original source of all genetic variation, mutation rate for most organisms is low. Hence new mutations on allele frequencies from one generation to the next is usually not large.