Drawing your portrait using your DNA

"You look just like your mother."

"Easy to pick out a Smith kid."

It's common knowledge that our looks are inherited. But just which genes make the face? Those pieces of the puzzle are now being picked out of the pile. Well, five of them at least. Researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam conducted a study using head magnetic resonance imaging and portrait photographs to map the face. Then they sifted through each individual's genome to find genes that seemed associated with the facial landmarks. Three of the genes, called PRDM16, PAX3 and TP63, had already been identified in other studies. Two, C5orf50 and COL17A1, were previously unknown.

There are a couple of interesting things here. First, these genes code for other things, not just facial characteristics. PAX3 is a gene that regulates muscle-cell formation, and it also controls the distance between the top of the nose and the right and left eyes.

Second, PAX3 had been identified in a previous study (by Lavinia Paternoster in research that was part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) that used different methods. This is a classic and strong example of replicating results.

We aren't quite able to have a computer draw a picture of a face using a the DNA from a swab of the cheek. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of genes which give us the faces we so identify ourselves with. But we are getting closer.
  



For more details check out the article at NBC science.