Long Runs of Homozygosity Are Correlated with Marriage Preferences across Global Population Samples.

ABSTRACT: Children of consanguineous unions carry long runs of homozygosity (ROH) in their genomes, due to their parents' recent shared ancestry. This increases the burden of recessive disease in populations with high levels of consanguinity and has been heavily studied in some groups. However, there has been little investigation of the broader effect of consanguinity on patterns of genetic variation on a global scale. This study, which collected published genetic data and information about marriage practice from 395 worldwide populations, shows that reported preference for cousin marriage has a detectable association with the distribution of long ROH in this sample, increasing the expected number of ROH longer than 10 cM by a factor of 2.2. Variation in marriage practice and consequent rates of con

SUBMITTER: Sahoo SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10497073 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature