• AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    It gets worse over time but it also eventually gets better, after the deleterious recessive alleles have been eliminated. Like in herd animals where a herd has only one breeding male per generation, so every generation is half-siblings.

    The general rule is that a population with a fixed degree of inbreeding will have a corresponding number of deleterious alleles so that the selection pressure balances out; but when you change the degree of inbreeding, you get a spike in expressed mutations until things balance out again.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      13 hours ago

      Not necessarily. If the problem is on a recessive gene or it isn’t a problem with only one out of two genes expressing the trait, the genetic disease won’t get bred out of the family.