What is the probability of offspring (both male and female) being affected by haemophilia if both parents are unaffected?

Haemophilia is a sex-linked genetic recessive disease, meaning it is associated with a gene located on the X chromosome. As males have only one X chromosome, inheriting that chromosome will mean that they will be affected by the disease. Females however, have two X chromosomes and as haemophilia is a recessive disease, two defective X chromosomes would have to be inherited for a female to be affected. In this case, the father is unaffected, and as he has to pass on a healthy X chromosome to his daughters, the probability of female offspring being affected is 0, regardless of the genotype of the mother. Any male offspring will inherit a Y chromosome from their father and an X chromosome from their mother, but there is a possibility that the mother might be a carrier (if she has both a healthy and a defective X chromosome) even though she is unaffected. If the mother is a carrier (which we don’t know in this question), the probability of a son inheriting the defective X chromosome and being affected by haemophilia is 50%.

EB

Related Biology IB answers

All answers ▸

What are life functions of a cell?


Outline the effects of temperature, light intensity and carbon dioxide concentration on the rate of photosynthesis in plants.


How does the process of transcription work?


What is the difference the secondary structure and tertiary structure of a protein?