Explain the consequence of overdominance in maintaining a de

Explain the consequence of overdominance in maintaining a deleterious allele in a population as it relates to genetic diversity.

Solution

overdominance is a type of selection that favours heterozygotes.An example of overdominance in humans is sickle cell anaemia.Individuals possesing the deleterious genes have a partial resistance to malaria.The heterozygotes in this case possess fewer physiologcal effects and some resistance to malaria.Overdominance prevents the deleterious genes from being lost in a population.Because in case of heterozygotes the partal benefit of deleterious allele is balanced by the drawback of mintaining the allele in homozygotes,it leads to maintainece of allelic diversity within the population.This diversity gives rise to a population that handles the environmental pressures in a more favourable manner.