Doppelgangers Share Similar Genetics and Habits
A new study by researchers in Spain reveals that human “look-alikes” who have comparable face features also tend to share many genetic resemblances, as well as also share certain lifestyle attributes.
The research, released in the journal Cell Reports, gives some insight into the molecular genetic mechanisms that add to building of the face. The authors state these findings could become applied to forensics, by enabling predictions of facial structure from DNA.
The experiment
Ricky Joshi of the Josep Carreras Leukemia Study Institute in Barcelona as well as his coworkers collected headshots of 32 couples of unconnected look-alikes from the pictures of Canadian artist François Brunelle, who has been collecting photos of lookalikes since 1999.
Joshi as well as his coworkers used three different face recognition algorithms to evaluate the photos to establish the similarities between each pair. Twenty-five of the pairs were categorized as being “very similar” by a minimum of two of the algorithms, and fifty percent were matched by all three, with scores similar to those of identical twins. They then contacted all of the people in the photographs that they had chosen as well as asked them to complete a questionnaire regarding their lifestyle and to send a sample of saliva.
The researchers extracted DNA from the saliva examples and examined it in three different methods: They (1) compared each participant’s genome by mapping more than 4.3 million genetic variants called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); (2) took a look at the participants’ “epigenomes” by comparing over 850,000 DNA alteration sites; as well as (3) utilized RNA sequencing to compare the participants’ microbiomes.
Look alikes, act alikes
The analyses revealed that 9 of the 16 very comparable couples shared over 19,200 SNPs in more than 3,700 genes, and that these resemblances were not because of any shared ancestry. By contrast, there was very little similarity in their epigenomes as well as microbiomes. Furthermore, these “ultra look-alikes” also shared physical characteristics such as weight and height, as well as habits and habits like smoking as well as educational level, suggesting that the common genetic variants impact not just physical look however also way of living.
The research is limited by the small size of the sample, which is also not representative of the world’s population. Thirteen of the look-alike couples were of European descent, and the rest 3 were East Asian, South Asian, and Hispanic. Still, it offers proof that those who look alike also act alike.
Read the original article on Big Think.
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