A team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (USA) has managed to link genetics with facial and racial features and degrees of femininity through a 3D model .
The results of the work, which have been published in the journal Plos Genetics , show that it is possible to extract much more information from DNA than science was capable of until now . By jointly modeling sex, genomic ancestry and genotype, information can be obtained about how certain genes and their variations can influence the shape of the face and its peculiarities.
For the study, the researchers analyzed the physical shape of the face and the genetic markers of the structure of the face , asking a group of volunteers to distinguish four factors in the images: if it is blocked from a face of a man or a woman , if female, what part of that person was from West Africa and, lastly, to be classified as a white, black African, African-American, European, European-American individual, or a combination of several. They then placed a grid on the 3D images of the subjects’ faces and measured the spatial coordinates of the points on the grid. Subsequently, they used statistical methods to determine the relationship between the variation of the faces and the effects of sex, genomic ancestry and the genes that affect the shape of both the face and the head as a whole.
Taking into account that only 5% of genes probably make the difference between the world’s populations, the face is perhaps the most visible part and the most likely to be influenced by genetic selection , hence they decided to focus on this part of the body in particular.
Researchers believe that identifying a face from DNA right now is not possible, but it will be, so it could be of great help to law enforcement agencies to create a DNA “mugshot” in order to identify both victims as criminals with great speed and certainty.
Image credit: Shriver, Claes; Penn State
