Theallele frequency represents the incidence of a gene variant in a population.Alleles are variant forms of a gene that are located at the same position, orgenetic locus, on a chromosome. An allele frequency is calculated by dividingthe number of times the allele of interest is observed in a population by thetotal number of copies of all the alleles at that particular genetic locus in thepopulation. Allele frequencies can be represented as a decimal, a percentage,or a fraction. In a population, allele frequencies are a reflection of geneticdiversity. Changes in allele frequencies over time can indicate that geneticdrift is occurring or that new mutations have been introduced into thepopulation.
