Show Notes
Baldwin-Brown JG et al., Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics - Bayesian analysis of 76,445 Utah Population Database pedigrees identifies a patrilineal Y‑chromosome lineage producing a 2:1 male bias, consistent with segregation distortion.
Study Highlights:
We analyzed 76,445 anonymized human pedigrees from the Utah Population Database using a Bayesian pedigree-propagation algorithm (Warp), complemented by transmission disequilibrium testing, permutation and Monte Carlo simulations. These methods identified a single patrilineal Y-chromosome lineage with 89 informative transmissions that produced 60 male and 29 female offspring, a 67.4% male proportion. Warp and the TDT independently flagged the same family and permutation/Monte Carlo tests indicated the observed male bias was unlikely to arise by chance (p≈0.001–0.05). The pattern is consistent with a Y-linked segregation distorter and is discussed as a possible contributor to unexplained male infertility and human sex-ratio dynamics.
Conclusion:
A multi-method analysis of deep Utah pedigrees identifies a statistically significant male-biased patrilineal lineage consistent with a Y-linked segregation distorter in humans.
Music:
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Reference:
Baldwin-Brown JG, Wesolowski S, Zimmerman RM, Peterson B, Tristani-Firouzi M, Hernandez EH, Aston KI, Yandell M, Phadnis N. Signatures of sex ratio distortion in humans. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 2026. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.04.702084
License:
This episode is based on an open-access article published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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