As Dave noted in class this evening, a study published in 1997 demonstrated that human mate choice was based partially on a protein found in human urine. Given this study is almost 15 years old, I decided to check Web of Science for any new literature on the subject. A review came up, “An initial evaluation of the functions of human olfaction” in the journal Chemical Senses.
From the review:
Evidence for mate choice based on olfactory-driven HLA detection is moderately favorable. Two studies on the closed Hutterite community in the United States have suggested that couples tend to have more dissimilar HLA than one would expect by chance alone and that this dissimilarity effect, so it has been argued, may be driven by olfactory cues (Ober et al. 1997
; Ober 1999
Culturally specific factors…
One Response to Human Mate Choice, Urine, Update
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It gets even more interesting when you look at the fact that HLA proteins aren’t just found in urine, they also constitute the system that your immune system uses to bind to foreign proteins (e.g. proteins from bacteria or viruses).
You and your mate having differences in HLA = your children having a more varied palette of HLA proteins = their immune system can respond to a wider range of foreign proteins = their immune system works better. Neat.