Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium and Color Blindness in Caucasian Population

I’ve known my friend Rafael for quite awhile. I see him every time during homeroom and economics; he seems absolutely normal to me until I asked him how my color laden economics poster looks. He said, “I don’t know, I am color blind”. The fact that Rafael’s condition is not an impediment for him surprised me, for today; there is virtually no selective pressure against color blindness today. In the contemporary world, color blindness is a pervasive trait that exists in many human beings, most predominantly in Caucasians, Rafael ofcourse, is of Dutch descent.

So here I am, arriving at an investigation question:

How is the frequency of red green color blindness alleles in Caucasians men changing?

Here are the variables of interest:

-       Phenotypic Trait: Red-Green Color Blindness

-       Sex Linked Recessive

-       Population: Caucasian men

 Hypothesis:

The frequency of color blindness is increasing because today, there is less selective pressure on colorblind people due to the fact that today, humans have developed colorblind aids to help color blind people read, write and interact with each other as if they have normal eyesight.

In order to test such a hypothesis, I would first change the frequency of P and Q. We know that 8% of Caucasian men have red green color blindness, so according to the Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium, we can deduce that Q (frequency of the recessive allele) must be 22.3%. Hence Q must be 0.223 and P must be 0.777. I would use the Excel software to model the genotypic distribution of the colorblind gene. I would use the frequency of the colorblind allele as Q and the frequency of the non-color blind allele as P in the algorithm. I will run the algorithm, creating an X amount of offspring, then calculating the allele frequency and then I will use these numbers for the next repetition. Since the are no selective pressure acting on this population due to wide array of support mechanisms that help people with colorblind (eg. Color blind aid in video games), the Hardy Weinberg equilibrium works here.

All in all, I could not arrive at a conclusion for my Excel algorithm is not working well, but in time, I am certain that my hypothesis would be tested, not in my puny model, but perhaps using raw data from real life.