BRAINCAKEAllele Frequency
Genetic diversity within a species depends on the variety of alleles in its gene pool. One way to describe this is the allele frequency.
Allele frequency is the proportion of all the copies of a gene in a population that are a particular allele. It is written as a decimal between 0 and 1 (or as a percentage). The frequencies of all the alleles of a gene add up to 1.
Because each diploid individual carries two copies of each gene, a population of N individuals contains 2N copies of the gene.
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Key terms in this lesson
- gene pool
- All the alleles of all the genes present in a population at a given time.
More in Biodiversity
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- Biodiversity of Different Habitats
- Changing Biodiversity
- Measuring Genetic Biodiversity
- Hawaii
- Ethical Argument for Biodiversity
- Ecosystem Services
All 22 lessons in Biodiversity · All Edexcel AS-level Biology topics