question_answer

(i)  Discuss the Louis Pasteur's view about the origin of life.

(ii) Define the following:

(a) Gene frequency

(b) Genetic drift.

Answer:

(i)  Louis Pasteur disapproved the spontaneous generation of life. Louis Pasteur by careful experimentation demonstrated that life comes only from pre-existing life. He showed that in presterilised flasks, life did not come from killed yeast while in another flask open to air, new living organisms arose from 'killed yeast'. Spontaneous generation theory was dismissed once and for all. However, this did not answer how the first life form came on earth.

(ii) (a) Gene frequency is the frequency with which a particular allele occurs in a population.

(b) Genetic drift refers to a change in the population of alleles in the gene pool.