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Doppelgängers Don't Just Look Alike—They Also Share DNA. New research finds genetic and lifestyle similarities between unrelated pairs of “virtual twins” (www.smithsonianmag.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/science@lemmy.world
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[–] 31 points 6 months ago (6 children)

DNA has a limited number of genes. Considering the enormous amount of functions they need to encode, the number of genes for each function becomes relatively small. 8 billion people and thousands of generations, we’re bound to have duplicates.

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  • [–] -4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    That's not exactly true. A lot of DNA is redundant, and a lot of DNA is dead code that doesn't do anything.

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago

    Since you’ve only been told that you’re wrong, and I was also under the impression that there was a lot of junk DNA in our genome, I did a little digging and found this article that explains the progression of our understanding pretty well: https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/human-dna-98-of-your-genetic-code-is-junk-or-is-it

    The TLDR is that the original junk DNA hypothesis is based on the fact that only ~2% of DNA is actually used in mapping out protein-construction. That was generally supported by the science from the 70’s to the early 2000’s. What scientists have found in the decades since then is that a lot of what DNA does involves regulating activity in the cell and responding to changing circumstances.

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