Wilson’s disease is inherited as a recessive autosomal trait. What is the probability of having sick children in a family

Wilson’s disease is inherited as a recessive autosomal trait. What is the probability of having sick children in a family where one of the spouses suffers from the disease being analyzed, and the other is healthy, were his parents, brothers and sisters also healthy?

Let’s designate the gene that causes Wilson’s disease as w, then the gene that determines well-being for this disease will be designated as W.

The spouse who suffers from Wilson’s disease has the ww genotype, because the disease belongs to the category of recessive traits and for its phenotypic realization, the genotype must be homozygous. This spouse produces the same type of germ cells – w.

A healthy spouse from a family in which this disease has not occurred most likely has a homozygous WW genotype, but the possibility of carriage of a recessive gene (Ww) is not completely excluded. Let’s consider both options.

Let a healthy spouse – WW, then he will produce only germ cells W. All offspring will be healthy and represented by heterozygous carriers of the Wilson disease gene – Ww.

Let a healthy spouse be the carrier of the pathological gene – Ww. Then it will produce two types of germ cells – W and w. The offspring of this pair will include the following variants: healthy children – carriers of the Wilson disease gene (Ww) – 50%, and children suffering from Wilson disease (ww) – 50%.