Topic 4—C: Diversity and classification- 4. Using gene technologies to assess genetic diversity

Question 1

How were early estimates of genetic diversity were made?

Answer 1

• by looking at the frequency of measurable or observable characteristics in a population

Question 2

What does a wide variety of each characteristic in a population indicate?

Answer 2

• a high number of different alleles
• so a high genetic diversity

Question 3

Gene technologies have now been developed that allow us to measure genetic diversity directly: (examples)

Answer 3

• different alleles of the same gene will have slightly different DNA base sequences. Comparing the DNA base sequences of the same gene in different organisms in a population allows scientists to find out how many alleles of that gene there are in a population
• different alleles also produce slightly different mRNA base sequences and may produce proteins with slightly different amino acid sequences so these can also be compared