36- Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

Back in the early 20th century, an English mathematician and a German scientist both independently came up with an equation to portray the frequency of different phenotypes in a hypothetical population. As we’ll see today, this equation rests on some pretty big assumptions which effectively exclude evolution. Why is this useful? Well, because we can use it to see if evolution might be occurring…

Sources for this episode: 1-2) Wikipedia articles for ‘Wilhelm Weinberg’ and ‘G. H. Hardy’. 3)TED-Ed, YouTube (2012), Five fingers of evolution- Paul Anderson (online) [Accessed 18/04/2021]. 4) Thain, M., and Hickman, M. (2014), The Penguin Dictionary of Biology, 11th edition. London: Penguin Publishing Group (p.329- 330). 5) Herron, J. C. and Freeman, S. (2015), Evolutionary Analysis (Fifth Edition, Global Edition). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited (p.257). 5) Chen, B., Cole, J. W. and Grond-Ginsbach, C. (2017), Departure from Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium and Genotyping Error. Frontiers in Genetics 8(167).