Association between mutations constrained in our distant past and modern human behaviours suggest traits associated with mate choice are the same today as they were thousands of generations ago... or not!

Constrained human genes under scrutiny. A higher number of damaging variations in certain genes is associated with an increased likelihood that a man will be childless. A geneticist and an anthropologist discuss what can — and can’t — be learnt from this finding. Loic Yengo & Heidi Colleran. Nature, Mar 23 2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00693-4

In brief:

• Some genes are constrained, which means that damaging variants of them are removed from the population by natural selection.

• Writing in Nature, Gardner et al.1 investigated the processes underlying this evolutionary process in humans.

• They report that having a high overall amount of damaging genetic variation in constrained genes is associated with childlessness in men.

• The association is linked to only 1% of the chance of childlessness between individuals, but to larger effects over many generations in a population.

• The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that having a greater burden of damaging genetic variation might affect a man’s ability to find a mating partner.