What happens to children from inbreeding? & bull; hello healthy

Mammals, most other animals, and certain plants, have evolved to avoid inbreeding, aka incest, of any kind. Others, such as the red cherries, have even evolved complex biochemistry to ensure that their flowers cannot be fertilized by themselves or by other genetically similar individuals.

Most pack animals (such as lions, primates, and dogs) remove young males from the herd in order to avoid inbreeding with females. Even fruit flies have a sensing mechanism to avoid the possibility of inbreeding in their flocks, so that even in closed populations they retain more genetic diversity than would otherwise by random matings.

Marriage between siblings and between parents and children is forbidden in every human culture - with a very limited number of exceptions. The glimpse of the idea of ​​having sex with a sibling or younger sibling, or a parent or child, is a terrifying - almost unimaginable - to most people. Reporting from Psychology Today, psychologist Jonathan Haidt found that almost everyone balks at the prospect of sexual relations between siblings, even in imaginary situations where pregnancy is not possible.

Why do living things avoid inbreeding, aka incest? Because in general, blood relations have a very bad impact on the population or the descendants of the marriage.

Offspring from inbreeding have a very high chance of being born with serious congenital defects

Inbreeding, aka incest, is a marriage system between two individuals who are closely related genetically or family lines, in which the two individuals involved in this marriage carry alleles that come from one common ancestor.

Incest is considered a humanitarian problem because this practice opens a greater opportunity for the offspring to accept the destructive recessive allele that is expressed phenotypically. A phenotype is a description of your true physical characteristics, including those that seem trivial, such as your height and eye color, as well as your overall health, history of illness, behavior, and general character and traits.

In short, an offspring from inbreeding will have very minimal genetic diversity in their DNA because the DNA inherited from the father and mother are similar. Lack of variation in DNA can have a negative impact on your health, including the chance of acquiring rare genetic diseases - albinism, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and so on.

Other effects of inbreeding include increased infertility (in parents and offspring), birth defects such as facial asymmetry, cleft lip, or stunting as an adult, heart problems, certain types of cancer, low birth weight, slow growth rates, and neonatal mortality. One study found that 40 percent of inbreeding children between two first degree (nuclear family) individuals were born with autosomal recessive disorders, congenital physical malformations, or severe intellectual deficits.

Offspring from inbreeding will inherit the same disease

Each person has two sets of 23 chromosomes, one set from the father and the other inherited from the mother (a total of 46 chromosomes). Each set of chromosomes has the same genetic set - the function to build you up - meaning you have one copy of each gene. The most important point about what makes every human being different and unique is that the copy of genes from the mother can be quite the opposite of the copy you get from your father.

For example, the gene that makes your hair black consists of one black version and a non-black version (these different versions are called alleles). The gene for the skin color pigment (melanin) consists of one normal version and the other a defective version. If you only have defective pigment-making genes, you will have albinism (a deficiency of skin color pigments).

Having two pairs of genes is a brilliant system. Because, if one copy of your gene is damaged (like the example above), you will still have a copy of your gene as a backup. In fact, individuals who have only one defective gene do not automatically develop albinism, because existing copies will produce enough melanin to make up for the deficiency.

However, people who have one defective gene can still inherit the gene to their offspring later - called 'carriers', because they carry a single copy but don't have the disease. This is where problems will start to arise for the offspring of incest.

If, for example, a woman is carrier the gene is damaged, so he has 50 percent also to pass this gene on to his child. Normally, this should not be a problem as long as it looks for a partner who has two pairs of healthy genes, so that their offspring will almost certainly get at least one copy of the healthy gene. But in the case of incest, it is very likely that your partner (who is your brother or sister, for example) carries the same type of defective gene, because it was passed down from both of your parents. So, if you take the case of albinism, it means that both of you as parents are carrier of the defective melanin-making gene. You and your partner each have a 50 percent chance of passing the defective gene to your child, so that your offspring will have a 25 percent chance of developing albinism - which seems trivial, but this figure is actually very high.

Indeed, not everyone who has albinism (or other rare disease) is necessarily the product of inbreeding. Everyone has five or ten defective genes hiding in their DNA. In other words, destiny also plays a role when you choose a partner, whether they will carry the same defective gene as you or not.

However, in cases of incest, the risk of both of you carrying the defective gene is very high. Each family is likely to have its own gene for disease (such as diabetes), and inbreeding is an opportunity for two people carrier from a defective gene to inherit two copies of the defective gene to its offspring. Eventually, their offspring can develop the disease.

Lacking DNA variation, the body's systems are weakened

This increased risk is also influenced by the weakening of the immune system experienced by children from blood parents due to a lack of DNA variation.

The immune system depends on important components of so-called DNA Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC). MHC consists of a group of genes that act as an antidote to disease.

The key for MHC to work well against disease is to have as many different types of alleles as possible. The more diverse your alleles, the better your body fights disease. Diversity is important because each MHC gene functions to fight different diseases. In addition, each allele of MHC can help the body detect various types of foreign material that have infiltrated the body.

When you are involved in inbreeding and have children from that relationship, your children will have an invariable DNA chain. This means that children with incestuous relationships have either a small number or variety of MHC alleles. Having limited MHC alleles will make it difficult for the body to detect various foreign materials, so that the individual will fall sick more quickly because the body's immune system cannot work optimally to fight various types of diseases. The result, people who are sickly.