Tuesday, February 17, 2009

You Could Only Look Like You

Genetics and Health calls our attention to an article from the Irish Times suggesting that it may one day be possible to tell what people look like from their DNA, by mapping correlations of specific gene combinations "with fixed points on the face, for example eye corners and separation, corners of the mouth, nose tip and length and face edges."

A question: can you tell a person's age from DNA? Because otherwise, a depicted face could be way off just because people can look a lot different at 15 than they do at 60, even assuming that eye corners and separation, etc., are consistent.

Let's not even consider such variables as weight, facial hair, features that can be adjusted with cosmetic surgery, and anything else that changes an appearance but that I'm not considering right now because I haven't thought of it.

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