Posted on 08/23/2022 12:02:46 PM PDT by Red Badger
Lookalike People In Experiment
Look-alikes in the study. (François Brunelle) It appears there's more to a doppelgänger than meets the eye.
DNA analyses of 16 look-alike couples have revealed some unrelated people with super similar faces also have similar heights, weights, habits, and behaviors.
Human resemblance, it would seem, is more than just skin deep.
In the study, 3 different facial recognition algorithms were tasked with scoring the likeness of 32 look-alikes pairs; half were classified as doppelgängers by all 3 algorithms. Researchers then conducted genetic analyses and found 9 pairs of "ultra" look-alikes.
Together, these super doppelgängers share 19,277 common genetic variations in 3,730 genes, many of which are to do with body and facial traits.
Their personal questionnaires suggest they share even more than that.
Some lifestyle features, like smoking habits, weight, and level of education, were also associated with many look-alike pairs.
Admittedly, the sample size is small, but the results, according to the authors, are "striking".
"These findings do not only provide clues about the genetic setting associated with our facial aspect, and probably other traits of our body and personality, but also highlight how much of what we are, and what defines us, is really inherited or instead is acquired during our lifetime," the authors write.
Examples of look-alikes
Look-alikes used in the current study. (François Brunelle)
The powers of nurture and nature are not easily teased apart, and while twin studies are a popular form of research in the field of genetics, doppelgängers are a bit of an untapped market.
Since 1999, Canadian artist François Brunelle has been using the far-reaching fingers of the internet to identify and keep track of look-alikes around the world.
Now, researchers are tapping into his catalog to better understand both what makes us human and what sets individuals apart.
The current study draws on 64 photographs of look-alikes recruited from francoisbrunelle.com, along with saliva DNA and lifestyle questionnaires for each participant.
According to genetic analyses, look-alikes were ultimately found to share similar genetic make-ups, even though pairs were not related.
Individual participants differed, however, in how their life impacted their genome.
Each person's microbiome, for instance, is heavily influenced by environmental factors like nutrition, exercise, and smoking.
This means the world of bacterial life in our guts differs quite a lot from individual to individual, even among those who have similar genetics.
The same goes for each look-alike's epigenome, which describes the chemical modifications made to coiled strands of DNA that can turn genes on or off. These differed even among ultra look-alikes in the current study.
This study builds on past research that suggests the structure of the human face, especially the nose, is sculpted by specific parts of DNA.
That doesn't mean look-alikes are long-lost twins or kindred spirits. None of the participants in the current study inherited their genes from the same recent ancestors.
Their genetic similarities represent a distinct subset of human resemblance that could one day be used to predict how an individual might grow and age.
"We provided a unique insight into the molecular characteristics that potentially influence the construction of the human face," says biomedical scientist Manel Esteller from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain.
"We suggest that these same determinants correlate with both physical and behavioral attributes that constitute human beings."
The study was published in Cell Reports.
Not super surprising.
i had a friend who would categorize people into tribes... for those who looked alike... if you are one in a million, than there are about 8000 identical to you out there.
I must have a very ‘common’ face, because even though I have lived in various places, everywhere I have been mistaken for someone else, even had a guy come up to me and start talking to me like he knew me his whole life and it took him at least a couple on minutes before he realized I was not his friend.................
Papa was a rolling stone.....
My three children have all been mistaken for others (usually famous people) at some point or another. The oldest resembles (or did at one time) Adam Levine, and he hates the comparison. My daughter has been chased by paparazzi for resembling Rashida Jones. Our youngest has been told he looks like a young Tom Petty. I guess it can be a curse or a blessing.
I’ve never been mistaken for somebody famous, except Fidel Castro when I was 22..........................
Thanks Red Badger. It's that common ancestor, Luke O'Thedraw, he's the culprit.
OR somebody be hidin’ in the woodpile....................😉
my brother and i look a lot alike and he has had some embarrassing situations with strangers coming up to him and massaging his shoulders... hehehe
justin trudeau is that you?
“ DNA analyses of 16 look-alike couples have revealed some unrelated people with super similar faces also have similar heights, weights, habits, and behaviors.”
So people who resemble each other resemble each other. That’s about it, right?
Nope, I don’t speak French!....................😎
😜😉.................................
Interesting story - - made better by your freeper name...
God has a large number of different cookie-cutters He uses for creating men. It’s a large, but finite, number. With women, choices are far more limited. For instance, they all get the same model of brain.
This fits in with the notion of that the difference between the races is not color. In fact, color may be the least consequential aspect of the differences in the races. We are not fusing into a singular population, we are actually slowly diffusing. Blacks and whites were more or less from the same culture in the 50s. 70 years later we are more Balkanized and different than ever. Indeed, in 1962 it was possible for a black baby boy to grow up to be president. Today? Maybe less so.
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