Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports, Dr. Esteller and his team recruited 32 pairs of look-alikes from Mr. Brunelle’s photographs to take DNA tests and complete questionnaires about their lifestyles. The researchers used facial recognition software to quantify the similarities between the participants’ faces. Sixteen of those 32 pairs achieved similar overall scores to identical twins analyzed by the same software. The researchers then compared the DNA of these 16 pairs of doppelgängers to see if their DNA was as similar as their faces. Dr. Esteller found that the 16 pairs who were “true” look-alikes shared significantly more of their genes than the other 16 pairs that the software deemed less similar. “These people really look alike because they share important parts of the genome, or the DNA sequence,” he said. That people who look more alike have more genes in common “would seem like common sense, but never had been shown,” he added. However, DNA alone doesn’t tell the whole story of our makeup. Our lived experiences, and those of our ancestors, influence which of our genes are switched on or off — what scientists call our epigenomes. And our microbiome, our microscopic co-pilot made up of bacteria, fungi and viruses, is further influenced by our environment. Dr. Esteller found that while the doppelgängers’ genomes were similar, their epigenomes and microbiomes were different. “Genetics put them together, and epigenetics and microbiome pulls them apart,” he said. This discrepancy tells us that the pairs’ similar appearances have more to do with their DNA than with the environments they grew up in. That surprised Dr. Esteller, who had expected to see a bigger environmental influence. #LookAlike #Doppelgangers #GeneticSimilarities #LookalikeStudy #DNA #Twinning #GeneticConnections #ScienceBehindLooks #HumanGenome #Epigenetics #Microbiome #FacialRecognition #ForensicScience #Genetics #HumanConnections #SharedGenes #LookalikeFriends #HumanDiversity #SecretTwins #HumanBonding #doppelgängerthe magic school bus doppelgänger theoryder doppelgänger schuberttaylor swift doppelgängercreepy doppelgängerliszt der doppelgängerbro had a doppelgängerthe magic school bus doppelgänger theory reactionwhen your friend is a doppelgängerbalkan childhood doppelgänger songtrixie doppelgängerder doppelgängerhajde doppelgängerinvoluntary doppelgänger