Solutions For An Introduction to Genetic Analysis Chapter 18 Problem 38P

Of a father-daughter mating, 31 children were born. Out of these 31, 6 died in infancy, 12 died in childhood, and 13 were perfectly normal.

The probability of the union of the father and child producing a lethal combination of genes would be as follows:

The probability of not receiving a lethal genotype would be as follows:

If the number of lethal genes is n, the probability of not being homozygous for any of them would be:

When we solve for n:

About 6.5 lethal recessive genes are predicted. If we consider undetected fatalities in utero, then the average number of lethal recessive genes would be higher than 6.5.