Could it be that after “committing” incest a certain number of times it can have deadly consequences for both the child and the mother? By this I mean that two parents have two children (boy and girl), those children together have a boy and a girl, etc… So is it possible that after a certain number of generations this ‘phenomenon’ can mean death ?
Thanks in advance.
Answer
Dear Maya,
There is no correct answer to your question. It is true that by committing incest you are “selecting” certain traits that may be detrimental to the offspring. I’ll try to make this clear. You may already know that you get one copy of each gene from your mother and one from your father. If your mother now has an error in this gene, so that your lungs, for example, would not develop as well, then it is not so bad because you have a second copy of this gene, which you received from your father and that is “healthy” is. In the case of incest, however, you may well get two “bad” copies of the gene, so that the bad trait (such as poorly developed lungs, for example) is definitely expressed.
With incest you will reduce the diversity of genes, so there is more chance that “bad” traits will accumulate, resulting in unhealthy offspring. However, it is not possible to say after how many generations exactly this would be deadly.
Hopefully this answers your question,
Regards,
Caroline
Answered by
Caroline Deprez
molecular biology
Agoralaan University Campus Building D BE-3590 Diepenbeek
http://www.uhasselt.be/
.