When we talk of functional macromolecules (e.g., proteins as enzymes, hormones, receptors, antibodies etc), towards what are they evolving?
Functional macromolecules are evolving towards creation of a complex organism. There are various evidences that are common to simple and complex forms of lite indicate common ancestry, e.g., histones protein tend to be well preserved among all eukaryotes, from amoebas to blue whale or to humans, with only one or two amino acids different.
The genetic code is nearly identical for all known life forms, from bacteria to archaea or animals and plants.
In a certain population, the frequency of three genotypes is as follows
$$ \begin{array}{llll} \text { Genotypes } & \text { BB } & \text { Bb } & \text { bb } \\ \text { Frequency } & 22 \% & 62 \% & 16 \% \end{array} $$$$ \text { What is the likely frequency of } B \text { and } b \text { alleles? } $$
$$ \begin{aligned} \text { The likely frequency of } B & =B B+1 / 2 B b \\ & =\left[22+\frac{62}{2}\right] \% \\ & =53 \% \\ \text { The likely frequency of } b & =b b+1 / 2 B b \\ & =\left[16+\frac{62}{2}\right] \% \\ & =47 \% \end{aligned} $$
Among the five factors that are known to affect Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, three factors are gene flow, genetic drift and genetic recombination. What are the other two factors?
The other two factors that affect Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium are mutation and natural selection.
Mutation is a sudden heritable change in an organism which is generally due to change in the base sequence of the nucleic acid in the organism's genome.
Microbial experiments show that pre-existing advantageous mutations when selected will result in formation of new phenotypes. Over few generations, this would result in speciation. Thus, resulting in changed frequency of genes and alleles.
Natural selection is a phenomenon by which organisms possessing heritable variations enabling their better survival reproduce and leave greater number of progeny than their counterpart.
It can lead to stabilisation (in which more individuals acquire mean character value), directional change (more individuals acquire value other than the mean character value) or disruption (more individuals acquire peripheral character value at both ends of the distribution curve).
What is founder effect?
Sometimes, a small number of individuals become isolated from a larger population to form a new population at some distance away from their place of origin.
The gene pool of the new population differs from the source population. It is possible that the change in allele frequency is so drastically different in the new sample that they become a different species. The original driftted population becomes founders and this effect is called founder effect.
Who among the Dryopithecus and Ramapithecus was more man like?
Ramapithecus was more man-like. It walked erect on its hind legs, ate hard nuts and seeds like modern man and had jaws and teeth similar to humans. It arose from Dryopithecus, which was considered to be a common ancestor of man and apes.
Dryopithecus was more ape-like with same length of arms and legs.