Explain how genetic drift differs from gene flowSolutionThe

Explain how genetic drift differs from gene flow?

Solution

The alleles of all genes in a biological population are known as “gene pool.” The term pool represents the collection of gametes (two gametes from one offspring) of all offspring within the population. Alleles move between individuals and populations during the process of mating and migration. This allele movement underlies gene flow in evolution. Gene flow is one of the main reasons for sustaining single gene disorders because gene flow maintains a copy of these alleles.

Genetic drift is the fluctuations in allele frequencies in gametes from generation to generation that occurs by chance. The phenomenon of genetic drift is characteristic of all populations.

The changes in allele frequencies that cause genetic drift occur randomly and are generally unpredictable. Genetic drift changes are found to be more accelerated if the population size moves towards reduction in size or shrink.

“Founder effect and a population bottleneck” are the two situations that result in decreased population size and hence, they accelerate the effects of genetic drift.

If a group of people are reproductively isolated or get separated from a large group, this result in founder effect. Founder effect generally results in increase in frequency of two alleles and a decrease in frequency of another two alleles.

If a large number of people are killed by natural disasters, the decreased size of original population results in bottle neck effect. The new population now have a restricted gene pool and only inherit the alleles passed by the small group of survived people.