From what I’ve read, the Chinese was married but having trouble reproducing. They went to a DNA test and this odd circumstance popped up. The Turkish lady rarely goes into detail but I might assume that she was married and had trouble conceiving.
I would suggest this...it’s only in the past twenty years that we commonly do DNA tests. I did my first test last year. I suspect as we branch out and do more of these....we will find hundreds of folks like this with the different number of chromosomes, and it’s only by luck that this group hasn’t figured this out, or met their partner with the same chromosome count.
I have questions over this....like in the case of the Chinese guy....did both his parents have the lesser number or the normal number. If they have the normal number...how did this guy just accidentally flip to the lesser number? So far, no one answers this type of question.
FYI, developmental biology says “no” we won’t find many. DNA is like software, an initial program load and the operating system for EVERYTHING that keeps us alive. When one’s genome is incomplete, so is your development and your metabolism.
Interesting nonetheless.
See comment 60. There could have been the highly improbable situation where both the sperm and the ovum divided abnormally. Perhaps both parents were older than average.