What is a recessive gene?

What is your favourite colour?
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Sorry.

I've been playing with the Hardy-Wienberg equation to see how selection
can actually work in a population and suddenly realized I have no idea
of what makes a recessive allele recessive. What attributes does the
recessive allele have that makes it less likely to be expressed or what
attributes does the dominant allele have that makes it more likely to be
expressed?

This of course brings up another question. Which allele gets expressed
and why when a particular locus is homozygous? Since there are many
alleles for a given locus within a population, with some presumably
dominant and others recessive but all slightly different, which allele
gets expressed if both are dominant (or recessive) but different?


--
Gary Bohn

Science rationally modifies a theory to fit evidence, creationism
emotionally modifies evidence to fit a specific interpretation of the
bible.

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: What is a recessive gene?
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  • Re: Hamiltons rule
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