We are all well aware of the detrimental genetic consequences of inbreeding such as hemophilia, color blindness and many other genetic disorders especially amongst British and Russian monarchies, however the impact of marriage rules on genetic diversity has never been studied.
Now a team of researchers led by Murray Cox, professor at Massey University, has examined the effects of arranged marriage on genetic diversity. This study is the first of its kind.
Given the importance at the traditional culture of the Indonesian Rindi, which marriage rules dictate at a man ideally marries his first cousin on his mother’s side in an aim to consolidate wealth and power, to study the effects – the team used a new DNA sequencing technique and a computer simulation tool known as SMARTPOP and they wanted to understand two key questions:
- What are the expected genetic consequences of following the marriage rules?
- From their genetic detective work, how closely do the Rindi actually follow the rules?
The team’s simulation suggests that strict adherence to this Rindi marriage should lead to a reduction in genetic diversity on the autosomes – X chromosome and mtDNA, but surprisingly, their data shows that they don’t follow rules and relaxed compliance produces a genetic diversity similar to that of random mating and their marriage rules are treated with sufficient flexibility to social connectivity with no harmful effect on biological diversity whatsoever.
The team hope with this new open-source tool they developed with SMARTPOP, researchers can now examine how other marriage rules throughout the world may affect human diversity.
ScienceSwitch 
Interesting study. It would be nice to see funding available for more studies like this to compare with the DNA mapping done by National Geographic and Ancestry.com.
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Aha! So falling in love with a stranger is scientifically valid! ;>)
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And arranged/cousin marriage is genetically safe if the community is large. Well, it’s bit irony that this kind of research came out from a place where arranged marriage is nearly extinct and not from a South-East Asian countries like Pakistan or India where arranged marriages and cousin marriages are widely prevalent. 🙂
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lmuch like in animals where the wild ones are stronger
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Exactly.
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