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.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Dark energy may not doom the universe, data suggestsSpeed Read The dark energy pushing the universe apart appears to be weakening
-
Pharaoh's tomb discovered for first time in 100 yearsSpeed Read This is the first burial chamber of a pharaoh unearthed since Tutankhamun in 1922
-
Scientists report optimal method to boil an eggSpeed Read It takes two temperatures of water to achieve and no fancy gadgets
-
Europe records big leap in renewable energySpeed Read Solar power overtook coal for the first time
-
Blue Origin conducts 1st test flight of massive rocketSpeed Read The Jeff Bezos-founded space company conducted a mostly successful test flight of its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket
-
US won its war on 'murder hornets,' officials saySpeed Read The announcement comes five years after the hornets were first spotted in the US
-
Dark energy data suggest Einstein was rightSpeed Read Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity has been proven correct, according to data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
-
New DNA tests of Pompeii dead upend popular storiesSpeed Read An analysis of skeletal remains reveals that some Mount Vesuvius victims have been wrongly identified
