Published Paper Details:

Among human beings inbreeding is usually uncommon because of social conventions and laws although in small isolated populations it does occur, mainly through mating between relatives. The most common type of close inbreeding is between first cousins. The effect is always an increase in frequency of genotypes that are homozygous for rare, usually, harmful recessive trait. Cytogenetical investigation was planned on Meos and Sunni Muslims of Haryana because instances of close inbreeding were observed among them. Blood samples of 56 individuals, both male and female, belonging to Meos and Sunni Muslims were taken. Short term lymphocyte cultures were set up according to technique of Moorhead et al. (1960). As many as, 100 well spread metaphases were selected from the slide of each individual for chromosomal aberrations, karyotype preparation. Morphometric analysis of chromosomes with respect to percentage relative length, arm ratio and centromeric index were found to vary in Meos and Sunni Muslims. Results of "t-test" of percentage relative length differences of individual chromosomes were found to be significant for chromosomes 2, 6, 8, 12, 18 and X.