is it more common for people with huntington's disease to have heterozoygous or homozygous alleles?

Question

I'm doing an extended essay on genetics and I'm just trying to see if people who have Huntington's disease have heterozygous alleles or homozygous and which is more common.

Answer 1

definitely more common heterozygous. huntington's as u know is dominant allele so a person with one allele gets huntington's.

for someone heterozygous to get the allele, that person has to inherit the gene only from one parent.

for a homozygous person, the individual get the gene from both parents.

huntington's is a progressively degenerating disease. and its usually detected in people in their 40s. which by that time they already have kids.

so the chances of someone being homozygous is less simply because it takes 2 people who have huntingtons disease to get together. also the genetic repeats of someone with homozygous huntingtons would also mean the onset of symptoms would show earlier in life and progressively get worse quicker than those with one huntungton allele

its a sad disease really. for someone to watch his/her parent slowly turn vegetative and then wonder if you will be like that when u turn 40 (heterozygousity) of course you can take genetic tests to see if u have the disease or not :)

Answer 2

It would be more common for them to be heterozygous. The allele is not very common in the population, so it's unlikely that the person inherited the allele from both parents at the same time to be homozygous. Huntington's is a dominant trait. A person can be heterozygous and have this disease.

Answer 3

Adults homozygous for Huntington's have been found... the disease does seem to be more marked in homozygotes than heterozygotes.

Because homozygosity in a randomly breeding population is
the square of the frequency of the gene in the population, homozygotes are rarer than heterozygotes.

Answer 4

Embryonic homozygotes for the Huntington allele tend not survive; therefore most affected adults will be heterozygous.

Answer 5

From the punnett square I just did in my head, 1/2 of the offspring will display the disease. I'm fairly sure that's right...

Answer 6

well it wouldnt really matter but since not everyone in the world carries this gene most probably have heterozygous. though it is a dominant trait will will indefinantly be passed on no matter if its hetero or homo.