Explain why inbreeding causes certain species to lose the ab

Explain why inbreeding causes certain species to lose the ability to respond to certain antigenic epitopes in relation to MHC.

Solution

The major effect of inbreeding is associated with changes in the genotypic frequencies but not in allelic frequencies. The increase in homozygotic frequency is mainly due to non- random mating between closely related individuals that reduces heterozygotic frequency. This increase in frequency of the homozygotes is mainly trigger exposure of deleterious recessive alleles to natural selection therefore final mean fitness of the population will be decreased often referred as inbreeding depression.

Inbreeding results in decreased heterozygous alleles and increase in homozygous alleles. This results in increased chances of inheriting the deleterious alleles or the recessive alleles, which would cause increase in genetic disorders. Therefore, this inbreeding is going to decrease in allelic diversity so that “defective genes for expression of major histocompatibility (MHC) proteins” finally causes certain species to lose the ability to respond to certain antigenic epitopes in relation to MHC. These are negative effects generated due to inbreeding finally result in defective loss of alleles