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[afung22]

Question: For a particular gene, which would a population contain more different alleles of, SNPs or SNVs? Why?

Hi there,
I thought that SNP is a single nucleotide polymorphism - which happens among a population, whereas SNV is a single nucleotide variation among an individual. So SNP should contain more alleles... Can someone please verify the answer and if it's wrong, explain why?
Thank you!

[dancedive]

I think SNV would be a better answer.

SNP is the single nucleotide variation found in the population at some frequency. Meaning it is not occurring randomly at random cells/people for random/transient time periods. SNPs are expected at a given genomic locus. It might be like this. A gene contains A nucleotide at position 365 in chinese people (generally) however it is G in caucasians. That means SNP at that locus is either A or G (two alleles)

however, SNVs don't reach to that frequency to be considered as common (it is a question of frequency to be a SNP or SNV). Therefore there might be 4 alleles for a given location if we are talking about SNVs.