Police may one day be able to reconstruct the shape of a suspect鈥檚 face from their DNA. The possibility is drawing closer thanks to identification of five genes that contribute to facial shape and features.
DNA tests for predicting eye, hair and skin colour are currently available or under development, so identification of genes linked with facial features could help create a more detailed 鈥淚denti-Kit鈥� picture purely from someone鈥檚 DNA. But the researchers caution that the genes they found only have small effects, and are only linked with a limited number of features, limiting their use until more genes of relevance are found.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a start,鈥� says from the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. 鈥淏ut we are far away from predicting what someone鈥檚 face looks like.鈥�
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Kayser and his colleagues analysed DNA from 10,000 Europeans by examining nine specific facial 鈥渓andmarks鈥� in three-dimensional MRI scans of their heads, and analysing a further eight landmarks in portrait photographs of their faces. But the genes identified only had small effects. For example, the variant with the biggest effect, in a gene called TP63, was linked to the gap between the centres of each eye socket being narrower by just 9 millimetres.
Other identified genes influenced the distance from the eyes to the bridge of the nose, the length of the nose, and the facial width between cheekbones.
鈥淭he data in this paper is useful but incremental鈥� comments of Pennsylvania State University in Hershey. He says his own, as yet unpublished, study of more than 7000 facial 鈥渓andmarks鈥� promises to yield more clues, not least because it includes faces of Africans as well as Caucasians.
Journal reference: PLoS Genetics,
