The taboo of romantic partnerships between closely related family members could have a basis in a real risk: the elevated rate of genetic disorders that can arise when closely related individuals mate. However, the effects of having parents who are distantly related hasn’t been widely studied.
In a recent analysis published in Nature, researchers found that height, lung function (a measure of overall health), educational attainment, and general cognitive ability were all negatively affected in the offspring of two distantly related parents.
Inbreeding—mating between closely related people—leaves the offspring more likely to inherit the same pieces of DNA from each parent, a state known as homozygosity. The opposite phenomenon, heterozygosity, is the inheritance of different pieces of DNA from each parent. Overall, heterozygosity increases the genetic diversity in offspring, whereas homozygosity makes them particularly susceptible to genetic disorders that strike when both copies of a gene are damaged.
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