Integrating the Radiation Resistance Allele into the Mountain Men Genome

Danny Chandla, Patrick Conboy

Abstract


The CW’s “The 100” introduces 3 separate populations of humans: the Sky People, the Grounders and the Mountain Men. The Sky People possess an allele that allows them to survive the increased radiation levels on the surface of Earth. Dante Wallace, leader of the Mountain plans to integrate 48 Sky people with the 382 members of the Mountain Men population. This is modelled using the Hardy-Weinberg principle showing ~20 % of subsequent generations to be radiation resistant and then the Wright-Fisher model to determine the probability of the allele becoming fixed into the population (~11%) and the number of generations required to do so (~262). 


Keywords


TV programme; Biology; Genetics; Hardy-Weinberg Principle; Genetic Drift; Radiation resistance; The 100

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References


Rothenberg, J., Morgan, K. & Patel, L. (2014) The 48, The 100, Season 2, episode 1. The CW, Frsit broadcast 22 October 2014.

Nielson, R. & Slatkin, M. (2013) An Introduction to Population Genetics: Theory and Applications, 1st ed. Sinauer Associates.

Hartl, D. (2000) A Primer of Population Genetics, 3rd ed. Sinauer Associates.

Didelot, X. (2015) Statistical Population Genetics, Lecture 2: Wright-Fischer model. University of Oxford. Available: http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~didelot/popgen/lecture2.pdf [Accessed 17/03/2015].


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