Genomic assortative mating in marriages in the united States

Abstract

pone.0112322 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= 361025 ; in HRS, it is 0.0017 with p = 7.13610213. The marital correlation among the positively assorting SNPs is 0.001 (p = .0043) in FHS and 0.015 (p = 1.66610224) 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. Copyright: - 2014 Guo et al. This Funding: Funding provided by Challenge Grant RC1 DA029425-01, National Institutes of Health, http://www.nih.gov/. The funders had no role in study design,.