Last time Oayo uploaded I promised more incest math.
Due to variations in genetics you would expect there to be variations in genetic compatibility between siblings. Some siblings might have very low compatibility and high risks of defective children if they inbreed while others may have nothing to worry about.
The average person carries 1-2 harmful recessive genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis or Tay Sachs and a number of harmful recessive genes that aren’t harmful enough when homozygous to cause a condition worth giving a name to. They might make you an inch shorter or make your IQ score a couple points lower or give you an extra ten percent chance of getting heart disease, nothing a doctor would notice at birth.
For each of these genes that the parents of the siblings have there is a one in four chance of them being passed down to both siblings which is necessary for them to be homozygous in their inbred child. If the average person has 1-2 you would expect the parents to have 3 disorders between them. There’s a 75% chance for each disorder that it is not carried by both siblings. 75% X 75% X 75% is 42%. This means that 42% of siblings do not share genes for any major genetic disorders.
Genetic disorders are not the only thing behind inbreeding depression however, some genes work better when heterozygous and inbreeding causes large amounts of homozygosity. The Major Histocompatibility Complex region or MHC is a region of the genome which stores immune responses. It’s better to be homozygous for MHC responses since having two genes for the same antibody is not as good as having more types of antibodies. MHC genes are inherited in blocks, recombination is very rare, the MHC you got from your mother is either one she got from her father or her mother, not a combination of both. This means we can treat the MHC as a single allele for our purposes, even though it is multiple.
There’s a one in four chance you and your sibling have no MHC overlap and are as reproductively compatible as any normal couple in this regard, a 50% chance you have partial overlap and a 25% chance you have complete overlap. If you have partial overlap there’s a 25% chance your incest baby will have homozygous MHC DNA, if you have full overlap there’s a 50% chance.
This leads me to my final estimate of 10.5% of siblings being genetically compatible since 42% don’t both carry serious genetic disorders and 25% chance they have no MHC overlap, one fourth of 42% is 10.5%.
I also have a theory that if two siblings feel mutual attraction to each other that they’re more likely to be genetically compatible. Humans can subconsciously detect genetic compatibility in prospective mates through scent, why wouldn’t this also apply to siblings? If you find your brother or sister’s scent attractive that’s probably a good sign you two are part of the 10.5%.