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Chances are, you’re going to marry someone a lot like you. Similar intelligence, similar height, similar body weight. A new study of tens of thousands of married couples suggests that this isn’t an accident. We don’t marry educated people because we happen to hang around with educated people, for example—we actively seek them out. And these preferences are shaping our genomes.
何谓缘分？缘分就是你的终成眷属是一个与你很像的人。你们智力水平相当、身形相似，就连体重都差不多。科学家对多位夫妇进行调查后得出结论，你们之所以能够结婚，这绝不是一个偶然。当你嫁给了一个受过良好教育的人，并不是因为你恰好出现在他的生活中，而是我们积极的将他们寻找出来，而这种追寻源自们的基因。
“This is a very exciting paper,” says Matthew Keller, a behavioral geneticist at the University of Colorado in Boulder who was not involved with the work. “Much ink has been spilled on why mates are correlated on so many traits.”
美国科罗拉多大学波尔得分校的行为遗传学家Matthew Keller表示，这真的是一篇令人震惊的论文，足够多的论据解释了为什么夫妻双方在很多方面都具有类似的特质。
To conduct the study, Matthew Robinson, a postdoc in the lab of geneticist Peter Visscher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues turned to large databases that include information on human physical and genetic traits. They homed in on a person’s genetic markers for traits such as height and body mass index (BMI) to predict the height and BMI of their partner. If the underlying genetic traits suggested an individual was tall, for example, their partner should also be tall. Then the researchers compared the partner’s actual height against the predicted height.
Matthew Robinson在澳大利亚布里斯班昆士兰大学遗传学家Peter Visscher的实验室中做博士后工作，他和同事们将研究方向转向了大数据，这其中包括人类生理及遗传性状的信息。他们通过追踪个人的遗传标记特征，例如身高和身体质量指数(BMI)，来对其伴侣的相关数据进行推测。如果被测对象的潜在基因特征是高个子，那么他的伴侣也应该是高个子。随后，研究人员将被测人员伴侣的实际身高和预测身高进行了对比。
When the scientists performed these calculations for more than 24,000 pairs of husbands and wives of European ancestry, they found a strong statistical correlation between people’s genetic markers for height and the actual height of their partner. They also found a statistically significant, but weaker, correlation between people’s genes for BMI and actual BMI in partners: People had actively chosen partners with similar genes to themselves, the team reports today in Nature Human Behaviour.
当科学家们对超过24000对欧洲血统的夫妻进行计算时，发现他们伴侣的预测身高和实际身高之间具有很强的相关性。同时，他们还发现伴侣的实际BMI和预测BMI之间也具有统计学意义，但是相关性较弱。研究团队在《Nature Human Behaviour》上表示，人们会主动选择跟自己有相似基因的伴侣。
This is evidence in humans of assortative mating, which is a form of sexual selection in which individuals with similar?traits?mate?with one another more frequently than would be expected under a random mating. It has been documented in nature, such as when more brightly colored eastern bluebirds mate with each other and when duller colored bluebirds pair up—or when big Japanese common toads mate, whereas small ones stick to themselves. Such assortative mating increases relatedness in families and can help their offspring survive better as long as the trait under selection (larger size, for example) continues to be beneficial—helping males acquire and fend off mates, for example.
这正是人类协调性交配的证据，在人类的性选择中，个体更倾向于寻找与自己相似的交配对象，而不是随机交配。这种例子在自然界中已经存在，例如色彩鲜艳的东部蓝知更鸟会找同样色彩艳丽的交配对象，毛色差的蓝知更鸟则会找同样毛色差的鸟儿。再比如日本蟾蜍也是大个跟大个交配，小个跟小个交配。这种协调性的交配能够增进家族亲缘关系，同时经过选择的体征(例如体型大小)能够增加其后代生存的优势，例如帮助雄性获得配偶。
The researchers also tested for assortative mating in other traits, such as years of education, in 7780 couples in a U.K. database. They looked for concordance among partners in genetic markers previously linked to years of education, and found a remarkably high correlation. This doesn’t mean that people choose mates based on actual years of education, but it likely implies that they select for similar interests, which are associated with level of education, Robinson says.
研究人员还对其他协调交配的特征进行了测试，例如针对英国7780对夫妇的受教育年限进行调查。结果他们发现，配偶教育年限的预测值和实际值也具有很高的相关性。Robinson说道，这并不意味着人们选择配偶会基于对方受教育的时间，但他们却是基于类似的标准，而这种标准和教育程度有关系。
These findings suggest that mate choice “affects the genomic architecture of traits in humans,” Robinson reported in the paper. Assortative mating boosts the odds that a trait, such as height, will be passed to offspring. That has implications for genetic models that predict how likely it is that members of a family will inherit a trait, whether it’s a disease such as schizophrenia or a physical trait, such as height.
Robinson在论文中写道，这种交配选择会影响人类基因组结构的特征。协调性交配原则增加了某些体征传承的几率，例如身高，这种体征则会传给后代。这还会对基因模型造成一定影响，例如我们可以预测后代中有多大几率继承这种特征，以及这种被继承的特征是不是一种病症，例如精神分裂的物理表征。
The next step, says Keller, is to use the new method to “understand why spouses are similar on many other, behavioral traits, such as IQ, political preference … and psychiatric disorders.” Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King’s College London, adds that new research suggests humans with autism, schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder tend to marry each other, and that the new method can explore whether those choices, too, are rooted in DNA.
下一步，Keller表示会用新的方法来了解为什么在其它方面配偶双方也会很相像，例如智力、政治偏好。。。甚至是精神疾病。英国伦敦大学国王学院的行为遗传学家Robert Plomin补充说，新的研究表明，患有自闭症、精神分类和多动症的人们也倾向于跟同类结婚。新的研究方法能够探知这些选择是否源自我们的DNA。
Robinson hopes to use his method to test more similarities in couples, including his own marriage. “Yes, we both have Ph.D.s and we’re both tall,” he says. “We fit the bill.”
Robinson希望用自己的方法对配偶双方间更多的相似性进行测试，甚至包括自己的婚姻。他说，没错，我跟我老婆都是博士，我们长得都很高，你看，我们很符合实验要求么。
