Color blindness is a sex-linked recessive disorder on the X chromosome. If the allele "b" is used to denote color blindness, record the genotype correctly represented a female that is color blind?

Question

Social Studies

Maeve Odonnell

22 February, 08:38

Color blindness is a sex-linked recessive disorder on the X chromosome. If the allele "b" is used to denote color blindness, record the genotype correctly represented a female that is color blind?

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Tatiana Booth · Answer 1

If the "b" allele denotes color blindness, a color blind woman would have the "bb" genotype.

Explanation:

Although color blindness is a genetic condition linked to the X chromosome, it is very rare for color blind women to exist, although they may carry the allele that denotes color blindness.

This is because women have two X chromosomes, if a woman receives an X chromosome from her father containing the "b" allele (which represents color blindness), but receives an X chromosome from her mother which contains the "B" allele (which does not represent color blindness), this woman will not be color blind, although she may pass the defective gene on to her children.

With this, we can affirm that, in women, color blindness is only expressed in recessive homozygosity, for this reason, a color blind woman would have the "bb" genotype.