Human Heredity 11th Edition by Michael Cummings

Exercise 4

The opposite of perfect pitch is tone deafness-the inability to identify musical notes. In one study, a bimodal distribution in populations was found, with frequent segregation in families and sibling pairs. The author of the study concluded that the trait might be dominant. In a family study, segregation analysis suggested an autosomal dominant inheritance of tone deafness with imperfect penetrance. One of the pedigrees is presented here. Based on the results, do you agree with this conclusion? Could perfect pitch and tone deafness be alleles of a gene for musical ability?