Recently, the Twin Strangers Project launched to find people who look the same but are total strangers. The founders of the project challenged themselves to find their look-alikes in just one month; each successfully found several before their time was up. Below is one founder meeting her doppelganger for the first time.
Apparently, there is a scientific reason behind why a total stranger can look like your twin. Women’s Health spoke with the American Society of Human Genetics' executive vice president, Joseph McInerney, about this interesting occurrence. The publication explains it as follows:
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Any two people taken at random are going to share about 99.5 % of their gene sequence... Of that remaining half a percent, there are 16 million base pairs of DNA, which is where you get “an enormous amount of individual variation” [says McInerney] — but that’s still only a half a percent of an entire human being's genome, and only one source of individual differences.
That said, the closer related to someone you are, the more likely you are to have similar DNA, which is why siblings and first cousins tend to look alike. “People who look identical almost certainly share more DNA than two random strangers who don’t look alike,” says Arthur Beaudet, MD, professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the molecular and human genetics department.
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Thorough research has yet to be done on this, but Dr. Beaudet says, “Some of these people may actually be distant relatives.” Perhaps your practically identical doppelganger is somewhere out there, too.
Click through to Women’s Health for more information. (Women’s Health).
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