Analysis Of Ask A Geneticist By Zoe Assaf

To most people of the modern Western world, incest is viewed as a cringe worthy, taboo subject, only practiced by isolated tribes, hillbillies in the deep South, or secular religious communities. A taboo subject that has long since died out as the world became more and more educated on genetics and diversity. Throughout history, even royalty practiced incest to keep wealth and power within their families. However, the most common practice of incest is not within a person’s immediate family, but is usually a relationship involved with cousins. Even famous biologist, Charles Darwin married his first cousin, and took a great interest in the debate of the 1871 Census of Great Britain and Ireland. This was a meeting that considered outlawing first

“Ask a Geneticist”, by Zoe Assaf is my secondary source used for this paper and explains more of the biology aspect of human inbreeding. Zoe Assaf is an evolutionary biologist and a Senior Bioinformatician at Natera, she received her education from Stanford University School of Medicine. No other sources were mentioned in this paper, because it came from a direct geneticist who resourced her education. Comparable to the primary source, Assaf states that the offspring of inbreeding couples would most likely not come out sickly as portrayed in media for the first generation. Nonetheless, the offspring have less variety in their DNA because of the parents being genetically related. Less diversity DNA results in a higher chance of catching rare genetic diseases such as albinism or hemophilia. One person has 46 chromosomes which consists of an assortment of genes. Half of those chromosomes (23) are from the mother and the remaining half (23), comes from the father. When it comes to inbreeding, a mother who is a carrier of a defective gene has a 50 percent of giving it to her child. And when the father is related to the mother in any sort of way, he would probably carry that similar broken gene. The child’s percentage of inheriting that gene has drastically increased as compared to a child whose father is not related to the

The Major Histocompatibility Complex region, also known as the “MCH” is an area part of the DNA that is comprised of genes that ward off disease. The more variety the MCH region has of all sorts of alleles, the greater immunity a person has. Different sorts of genes are responsible in the fight against certain diseases. Once again, inbreeding couples have children who lack diversity in their DNA and so their MCH region has fewer types of