Why are small populations more prone to genetic disease

Inbreeding  and greater chance of passing deletereous mutations through generations

Explanation:

There are several reasons why small populations are more prone to genetic diseases. One of them is that in small populations there tends to be more inbreeding , that is breeding between individuals are closely related. Inbreeding increase the chances of offspring being affected by deletereus homozygous genotypes.

On the other hand, the acquisition of a deleterious mutation in a small population is more likely to be spread in that small population  than in a large population.

The small population is prone to the disease more than the large population as the former have less diversity of organism and therefore there are fewer chances of occurrence of an organism that have resistance to the disease.

Further Explanation:

Genetic drift refers to the change in the allele frequency observed in the population due to random sampling. This may occur due to a bottleneck effect or Founder’s effect.

The allele frequency remains constant if the population follows the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.

There is more probability of occurrence of diversity in a population of large size that is the large population has an organism that has homozygous dominant allele, heterozygous allele, and homozygous recessive allele. So there is more probability that this population may have an organism having disease-resistant allele than the population of small size.

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Answer Details:

Grade: High school

Chapter: Evolution

Subject: Biology

Keywords:

Population, organism, resistance, disease, Genetic drift, allele frequency, random sampling, bottleneck effect, Founder’s effect, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, homozygous dominant allele, heterozygous allele, a homozygous recessive allele

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