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Public Library of Science, PLoS ONE, 11(9), p. e112322, 2014

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112322

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Genomic Assortative Mating in Marriages in the United States

Journal article published in 2014 by Guang Guo, Lin Wang, Hexuan Liu, Thomas A. Randall ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Assortative mating in phenotype in human marriages has been widely observed. Using genome-wide genotype data from the Framingham Heart study (FHS; number of married couples = 989) and Health Retirement Survey (HRS; number of married couples = 3,474), this study investigates genomic assortative mating in human marriages. Two types of genomic marital correlations are calculated. The first is a correlation specific to a single married couple “averaged” over all available autosomal single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs). In FHS, the average married-couple correlation is 0.0018 with p = 3×10−5; in HRS, it is 0.0017 with p = 7.13×10−13. The marital correlation among the positively assorting SNPs is 0.001 (p = .0043) in FHS and 0.015 (p = 1.66×10−24) in HRS. The sizes of these estimates in FHS and HRS are consistent with what are suggested by the distribution of the allelic combination. The study also estimated SNP-specific correlation “averaged” over all married couples. Suggestive evidence is reported. Future studies need to consider a more general form of genomic assortment, in which different allelic forms in homologous genes and non-homologous genes result in the same phenotype.