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Ancestry attracts, but love is blind
November 20, 2009People preferentially marry those with similar ancestry, but their decisions are not necessarily based on hair, eye or skin colour. Research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, shows that Mexicans mate according to proportions of Native American to European ancestry, while Puerto Ricans are more likely to settle down with someone carrying a similar mix of African and European genes.
Neil Risch, from the University of California, San Francisco, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of ancestry on partner choice in Mexicans and Puerto Ricans living in their own countries or in the USA. The subjects came from The Genetics of Asthma in Latino Americans (GALA) study, conducted by Risch's UCSF colleague, Esteban Gonzalez Burchard. Risch said, "Latin America provides a unique opportunity to study population structure and non-random mating, due to the historical confluence of European, Native American and African racial groups over the past five centuries. We found that assortative mating, that is partner choice based on a shared ancestry, is very common in these populations".
Quite how our DNA influences our desires remains mysterious. Risch and his colleagues did not find that geography or socio-economic status could explain the ancestral influence on romance, and factors like hair, eye and skin colour individually only had a minor role. According to Burchard, "Certainly physical characteristics, such as skin pigment, hair texture, eye color, and other physical features are correlated with ancestry and are likely to be factors in mate selection. However, the spouse correlation for these traits and the correlation of these traits with ancestry were actually below what would be required to fully explain the phenomenon".
The researchers not only found similar ancestry patterns between the pairs of spouses, they also found the imprint of many generations of such assortative mating in the genomic architecture within each individual, in that there were non-random associations of genes whose frequency differed between the original ancestral populations.
BioMed Central
The researchers not only found similar ancestry patterns between the pairs of spouses, they also found the imprint of many generations of such assortative mating in the genomic architecture within each individual, in that there were non-random associations of genes whose frequency differed between the original ancestral populations.
BioMed Central
Ancestry Current Events and Ancestry News RSSDNA testing on 2,000-year-old bones in Italy reveal East Asian ancestry
Researchers excavating an ancient Roman cemetery made a surprising discovery when they extracted ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the skeletons buried at the site: the 2,000-year-old bones revealed a maternal East Asian ancestry.
Novel studies of decomposition shed new light on our earliest fossil ancestry
Decaying corpses are usually the domain of forensic scientists, but palaeontologists have discovered that studying rotting fish sheds new light on our earliest ancestry.
US Parkinson's rates highest in whites, Hispanics, and Midwest, Northeast
The largest epidemiological study of Parkinson's disease in the United States has found that the disease is more common in the Midwest and the Northeast and is twice as likely to strike whites and Hispanics as blacks and Asians.
Disease severity in H1N1 patients
A new study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.091884 concerning the severity of H1N1 influenza has found that admissions to an intensive care unit (ICU) were associated with a longer interval between symptom onset and treatment with antivirals and with presence of an underlying medical condition.
Cholesterol-lowering drug shows promise against serious infections in sickle cell disease
New research suggests a family of widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs might help protect individuals from serious illness following bacterial infection, including the pneumococcal infections that pose a deadly threat to those with sickle cell disease.
30,000-year-old teeth shed new light on human evolution
The teeth of a 30,000-year-old child are shedding new light on the evolution of modern humans, thanks to research from the University of Bristol published this week in PNAS.
U-M study reveals lack of diversity in embryonic stem cell lines
The most widely used human embryonic stem cell lines lack genetic diversity, a finding that raises social justice questions that must be addressed to ensure that all sectors of society benefit from stem cell advances, according to a University of Michigan research team.
New genes for lung disease discovered
Scientists have discovered five genetic variants that are associated with the health of the human lung. The research by an international consortium of 96 scientists from 63 centres in Europe and Australia sheds new light on the molecular basis of lung diseases.
Blood Stem-Cell Transplant Regimen Reverses Sickle Cell Disease in Adults
A modified blood adult stem-cell transplant regimen has effectively reversed sickle cell disease in 9 of 10 adults who had been severely affected by the disease, according to results of a National Institutes of Health study in the Dec. 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Study identifies genetic predeterminants for diabetes in African-Americans
For years, scientists have tried to determine the basis for discrepancies between race and the predisposition for development of diseases such as type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
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