![\"Geneticist](\"https:\/\/wp-assets.futurism.com\/2019\/12\/dating-app-matches-dna-300x158.jpg\")
<\/div>Harvard geneticist George Church’s long list of lofty — but very possibly attainable — goals for the future of DNA research includes resurrecting the woolly mammoth<\/a>, reversing human aging,<\/a> and perhaps even helping you gain superhuman powers<\/a>.<\/p> Also on his professional to-do list? Create a dating app<\/a> that matches users based on their likelihood of not<\/em> passing genetic diseases along to their offspring.<\/p> To understand how that might work, you need to know a bit about genetic inheritance<\/a>, and specifically how genes can be dominant or recessive.<\/p> As you might expect from the nomenclature, dominant genes take precedence over recessive ones — meaning that if two people have a baby, and one person has a dominant gene for a trait and the other has a recessive gene for it, the dominant gene is more likely to show up in their offspring.<\/p> A simplified example: the gene for brown eye color is dominant, while the one for blue is recessive, so if a brown-eyed person and a blue-eyed person have a child, it’ll likely have brown eyes<\/a>.<\/p> Some genetic diseases and conditions, such as sickle cell anemia<\/a>, are caused by recessive genes. The average person carries an estimated 20 of those recessive genes,<\/a> but most of the time, they don’t even know it because they also inherited a “healthy” dominant gene from their parents that overshadows the recessive one.<\/p> But if a carrier of a disease-causing recessive gene ends up having a baby with someone who also carries the same recessive gene, their offspring has a 25 percent chance<\/a> of actually suffering from the disease — and that’s the situation Church hopes to avoid with his in-development DNA dating app, according to a new interview<\/a> with CBS’s<\/em> “60 Minutes.”<\/p> “You wouldn’t find out who you’re not compatible with,” he told correspondent Scott Pelley. “You’ll just find out who you are compatible with.”<\/p> “You’re suggesting that if everyone has their genome sequenced and the correct matches are made, that all of these diseases could be eliminated?” correspondent Scott Pelley asked.<\/p> “Right,” Church replied.<\/p> Of course, we’re a long way from a world in which everyone has their genome sequenced.<\/p> And we’re even further from one in which everyone would be willing to let their genomic data help determine who they start a family with — after all, two carriers of a recessive gene for a disease can<\/em> still have a healthy child, and no doubt some partners would be willing to take the risk in the name of love.<\/p> Still, some people already automatically swipe left on potential mates for a litany of — sometimes bizarre<\/a> — reasons. And if we could add “incompatible DNA” to the general list of dating dealbreakers, the end result could be a healthier human race.<\/p> The post Famous Geneticist’s Dating App Would Match Users Based on DNA<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p> Read more: Harvard geneticist George Church\u2019s long list of lofty \u2014 but very possibly attainable \u2014 goals for the future of DNA research includes resurrecting the woolly\u00a0mammoth , reversing human aging, and perhaps even helping you gain superhuman powers . Also on his professional to-do list? Continue reading
Famous Geneticist’s Dating App Would Match Users Based on DNA<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"