Scientists at the Genotek Medical Genetic Center have found that 83% of Russians are related to each other.
In the course of an experiment conducted by a group of researchers, it turned out that Russia is one big family: every Russian has at least one relative. Geneticists used DNA samples from 1848 volunteers aged 20-45 years from various cities of Russia and Ukraine.
Genealogy tests are aimed at identifying ethnicity and origin on the maternal and paternal lines. The experts compared the chromosomes of different subjects with each other and thus determined the relationship. As a result, experts found 1299 genetic links from the fifth to the tenth generation, 549 - the fourth, 39 and 27 - the third and second generations.
As Valery Ilyinsky, CEO of Genotek, said, there is a probability of 0.8 that it is possible to determine the presence of various degrees of kinship. “Moreover, the chances of finding relatives on a nearby street or on the other side of the country are approximately the same,” Ilyinsky stressed.
According to scientists, this situation is explained by the historical peculiarities of the country: the post-war years contributed to the mass relocation of people, a huge number of children lost their parents and were brought up in boarding schools, archive data was destroyed. Therefore, the search for family members was sometimes not only difficult, but absolutely impossible.
Sofia Bessonova