Skip to main content

People more likely to choose a spouse with similar DNA, research shows

Individuals are more genetically similar to their spouses than they are to randomly selected individuals from the same population, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Scientists already knew that people tend to marry others who have similar characteristics, including religion, age, race, income, body type and education, among others.
In the new study, published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists show that people also are more likely to pick mates who have similar DNA. While characteristics such as race, body type and even education have genetic components, this is the first study to look at similarities across the entire genome.
"It's well known that people marry folks who are like them," said Benjamin Domingue, lead author of the paper and a research associate at CU-Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science. "But there's been a question about whether we mate at random with respect to genetics."
For the study, Domingue and his colleagues, including CU-Boulder Associate Professor Jason Boardman, used genomic data collected by the Health and Retirement Study, which is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging.
The researchers examined the genomes of 825 non-Hispanic white American couples. They looked specifically at single-nucleotide polymorphisms, which are places in their DNA that are known to commonly differ among humans.
The researchers found that there were fewer differences in the DNA between  than between two randomly selected individuals. In all, the researchers estimated genetic similarity between individuals using 1.7 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms in each person's genome.
The researchers compared the magnitude of the  between married people to the magnitude of the better-studied phenomenon of people with similar educations marrying, known as educational assortative mating. They found that the preference for a genetically similar spouse, known as genetic assortative mating, is about a third of the strength of educational assortative mating.
The findings could have implications for statistical models now used by scientists to understand genetic differences between human populations because such models often assume random mating.
The study also forms a foundation for future research that could explore whether similar results are found between married people of other races, whether people also choose genetically similar friends, and whether there are instances when people prefer mates whose DNA is actually more different rather than more similar.
 Explore further: Study relies on twins and their parents to understand height-IQ connection
More information: "Genetic and educational assortative mating among US adults," by Benjamin W. Domingue, Jason Fletcher, Dalton Conley, and Jason D. Boardman. PNASwww.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1321426111

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Einstein’s Lost Theory Describes a Universe Without a Big Bang

Einstein with Edwin Hubble, in 1931, at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, looking through the lens of the 100-inch telescope through which Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929.  Courtesy of the Archives, Calif Inst of Technology. In 1917, a year after Albert Einstein’s  general theory of relativity  was published—but still two years before he would become the international celebrity we know—Einstein chose to tackle the  entire universe . For anyone else, this might seem an exceedingly ambitious task—but this was Einstein. Einstein began by applying his  field equations of gravitation  to what he considered to be the entire universe. The field equations were the mathematical essence of his general theory of relativity, which extended Newton’s theory of gravity  to realms where speeds approach that of light and masses are very large. But his math was better than he wanted to believe—...
Post a Comment
Read more

There’s a Previously Undiscovered Organ in Your Body, And It Could Explain How Cancer Spreads

Ever heard of the interstitium? No? That’s OK, you’re not alone  —  scientists hadn’t either. Until recently. And, hey, guess what  —  you’ve got one! The interstitium is your newest organ. Scientists identified it for the first time because they are better able to observe living tissues at a microscopic scale, according to a recent study published  in  Scientific Reports , Scientists had long believed that connective tissue surrounding our organs was a thick, compact layer. That’s what they saw when they looked at it in the lab, outside the body, at least. But in a routine endoscopy (exploration of the gastrointestinal tract), a micro camera revealed something unexpected: When observed in a living body, the connective tissue turned out to be “an open, fluid-filled space supported by a lattice made of thick collagen bundles,” pathologist and study author Neil Theise  told  Research Gate . This network of channels is present throughout ...
Post a Comment
Read more

First light-bending calculator designed with metamaterials

Exotic materials that bend light in extreme ways could be used to perform complex mathematical operations, creating a new kind of analogue computer. Tools for manipulating light waves have taken off in recent years thanks to the development of  metamaterials . These materials have complex internal structures on scales smaller than the wavelength of the light they interact with, and so they produce unusual effects. Most famously, metamaterials promise to deliver " invisibility cloaks " that can route light around an object, making it seem to disappear. Nader Engheta  at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and his colleagues decided to explore a different use for metamaterials, one that adapts the  old idea of analogue computing . Today's digital computers are based on electrical switches that are either on or off. But before these machines were analogue computers based on varying electrical or mechanical properties. The  slide rule  is one example...
Post a Comment
Read more