Stages in the evolution of the Hardy-Weinberg law

• Main Author: Alan E. Stark
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sociedade Brasileira de Genética 2006-01-01
• Series: Genetics and Molecular Biology
• Subjects: Hardy-Weinberg law; non-random mating
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1415-47572006000400001

The Hardy-Weinberg law has been used widely for about one hundred years with little question as to the foundations laid down by its originators. The basic assumption of random mating, that is choice of mates by a process akin to that of a lottery, was shown to produce genotypic proportions following the "binomial-square" rule, the so-called Hardy-Weinberg proportions (HWP). It has been assumed by many that random mating was the only way of pairing genes capable of producing HWP. However it has been shown that HWP can be obtained and maintained by non-random mating. The steps along the way to this revelation and some implications are reviewed.