A new study concludes that white husbands and wives are more similar to each other genetically than they are to random individuals, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Scientists investigated the statistical likelihood that a person will marry someone with a similar genotype, gathering data from 9,429 non-Hispanic white individuals. Researchers also examined 1.7 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (points where the DNA sequences of individuals diverge). They discovered that while the married couples were more genetically similar than randomly generated pairs, that likeness "was just one-third the magnitude of educational similarity between spouses," notes the Times' Monte Morin.
The authors of the study would like to conduct research with non-whites as well, calling their findings only "the first step" in understanding how genetics influence marriages. Their findings were published Monday in the journal PNAS.
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