According to the article, In a Brazilian Town, a Rogue Gene and a Boom in Twins, the long term mystery of the numerous numbers of twins in a small Brazilian town has been found. It turns out that it’s not evil experiments done by Josef Mengele, the evil Nazi physician, and no it’s not something in the water, its genes! The small Brazilian town of Candidl Godoi caught the attention of a group of scientists that set out to prove these crazy rumors wrong. Ursula Matte, a geneticist in Porto Alegre Brazil was attracted to the phenomenon of the frequent births of twins in this area and the outlandish reasoning behind why so many are born.
She found that the most accurate explanation was not experiments done by Mengele, whom did live and die in Brazil, because the twins were appearing even before his time. Its not in the water because the water was tested and no abnormalities or high level of the “mysterious mineral” responsible for the births were found. So Matte came to one conclusion by studying the high level of inbreeding in the area of entirely German speaking immigrants.
Matte examined not only genetic tests but baptism certificates. This confirmed that the area with the highest level of twin births, Sao Pedro, with 33 pairs out of 436 births from 1959-2008, the residents were all living within one and a half square mile area. The last names of the individuals and genetic tests were run on the women.
The gene was believed to have been brought over by a small number of immigrant families living in the Sao Pedro area. However this variant gene may not be a universal gene at all, for example a gene for a twin in New Zealand may generate different results. The idea that this gene is specific only to this inbreed population is unique and interesting new information in the field of genetics. The gene shows that though we have so many genes in common there is always a possibility for a new rare gene find among different groups of people. This helps make us all unique individuals.
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