Back

Genetic basis of partner choice

Zheng, Q.; van Alten, S.; Lyngstad, T. H.; Ciscato, E.; Sun, Z.; Miao, J.; Wu, Y.; Dorn, S.; Zheng, B.; Havdahl, A.; Corfield, E. C.; Nivard, M.; Galama, T. J.; Turley, P.; Chiappori, P.-A.; Fletcher, J. M.; Lu, Q.

2025-02-05 genetics
10.1101/2025.02.03.636375 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Previous genetic studies of human assortative mating have primarily focused on searching for its genomic footprint but have revealed limited insights into its biological and social mechanisms. Combining insights from the economics of the marriage market with advanced tools in statistical genetics, we perform the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) on a latent index for partner choice. Using 206,617 individuals from four global cohorts, we uncover phenotypic characteristics and social processes underlying assortative mating. We identify a broadly robust genetic component of the partner choice index between sexes and several countries and identify its genetic correlates. We also provide solutions to reduce assortative mating-driven biases in genetic studies of complex traits by conditioning GWAS summary statistics on the genetic associations with the latent partner choice index.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.