TPA-25 is an Alu element which is inserted within an intron of the tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) gene. An individual may be homozygous for the presence or absence of TPA-25, or heterozygous for it. Evolution occurs in a population if the frequency of alleles changes from one generation to the next. The Hardy-Weinberg theory includes five conditions which the population must follow in order to be considered to be in Hardy-Weinberg's equilibrium in which there is no evolutionary change occurring. In my experiment I used the Hardy-Weinberg equation to examine whether the proportion of TPA-25 alleles in a population of students shows whether evolution has occurred or not.
[...] Assessment of data compared to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is achieved by the chi-square statistics shown in Table 1 and results recorded after according to statistical hypotheses made. Note that the probability of making a Type I Error in which you reject you null hypothesis is set at a limit of α= This means that I allowed chance to make a Type I Error in which if my α-value is greater than 0.05 I will fail to reject my null hypothesis and if it is less than 0.05 I will reject it. [...]
[...] I used the proportion of TPA-25 “alleles” counted in a population of University of Florida students to conduct a neutral experiment on evolution in which positive for the presence of TPA-25 or not would not affect the character or privacy of the individual. (Vliet 2008) In order for scientists to assess whether or not evolution has occurred in a population they must take into account all of the alleles of everyone in that population, or in other words they must study the population's gene pool. [...]
[...] Specifically, evolution is a change in the proportion of alleles within a population. An allele is a form of one gene located on a chromosome at that gene's locus or location. Every human has two alleles at each locus which can either be the same, homozygous, or different, heterozygous. For example, say a person has an eye color locus which is coded with one blue allele and one green allele. This means the person is heterozygous and depending whether one allele is dominant, recessive, or co- dominant to the other, determines the eye-color of that individual. [...]
[...] In order to determine the genotypes of the students which would in turn give the proportions of each allele in the population I used a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This procedure allowed me to produce multiple copies of the particular DNA sequences that included the site for TPA-25. PCR uses an enzyme that replicates DNA in cells, called DNA polymerase, and strands of DNA called primers that compliment the DNA sequence we are studying. The primers and DNA polymerase work with the small amount of template (original) DNA to make copies of it. [...]
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