According to textbooks, carriers of such recessive genes should not experience any disadvantage. However, we found that, as a group, they do have more medical diagnoses, and slightly fewer offspring.

“Our study showed that the search for recessive effects in genome-wide association studies can be worthwhile, especially if somewhat rarer genetic variants are included, as is the case in the FinnGen ...

Some are caused by recessive genes, where a child must inherit an altered gene copy from both parents to develop the condition. They include Joubert syndrome, Bardet-Biedl syndrome and Tay-Sachs ...