Question

As it turns out the Sanrio Corporation makes oodles and oodles of money selling Hello Kitty paraphernalia. What few people know is that there really is a Hello Kitty that Sanrio breeds to be flattened onto backpacks and lunchkits and whatever. Unfortunately for Sanrio a mutation has appeared in the population of Kitties. This recessive mutation causes the otherwise pleasant easy-going feline to become a surly chain-smoking goth kitty. Considering these facts look at the population of kitties below and tell me what you can about the population.

Answer 1

In this group of kitties, it is evident that a large proportion of kitties (approx 40 % ) are born with the smoking disorder. This situation is Autosomal Recessive Inheritance, as is also mentioned in the question. It is a disorder which occurs when a person (in this case a kitty ) has defects in both the copies of an autosomal gene. Unsually every kitty , when it comes to a closed group is a carrier of the recessive mutations, but as two genes are required to cause the disorder to appear, the likelihood that carriers will have affected children is low.  

But in this case, a huge population of kitties have the disorder. In this case consanguinity can be a factor. Consanguinity occurs outbred populations where mating between family members occur and the entire population is descended from a small number of ancestors, who were the carriers of the disorder.Consanguinity increases the likelihood or chances of expression of a recessive trait and in consanguinity females who have both X alleles also get affected.

The population of affected kitties will keep increasing if immediate actions are not taken in this case.

The best solution to deal with this disorder will be to make the kitties mate with kitties outside of the group present in the factory and those which do not carry the trait of chain smoking.This will slowly reduce the recessive expression on the kitties with generation. And they will become either carriers or will complete absence of the recessive disorder