#Why are my dna matches either manual
#Why are my dna matches either skin

What makes the genetics of our appearance even more complex is that your environment can change the way we look too! Spending time in the sun can make your skin darker, your hair lighter, or cause freckles. Read more about how genes influence your face shape here.ДЇigure adapted from Wikimedia Is it all written in our genes? There are many more that we already know about and even more that we havenвЂ™t figured out yet.

The words next to each facial feature are just a few genes that have been shown to be involved in that aspect of appearance. There are tons of genes that shape our appearance. Sometimes that means we donвЂ™t look like them at all. Even though we get all our DNA from our parents, each of us has a unique combination of genes. 1 Different combinations of genes for one of these traits create a bunch of different physical attributes.ДЄnd on top of that, your parents may have multiple versions of each of these genes! The version that you get can be totally different from the version your sibling gets.ДЄll of the different combinations of these genes come together to determine how you look. And five more that are involved with how wide your face is. There are five that say how the tip of your nose will look.

#Why are my dna matches either manual

So for each trait, we have some subset of the instruction manual that dictates what that trait will look like.Д«ut it gets even more complicated! Some of the traits that are involved in physical appearance are determined by multiple genes.ДЇor example, there are four genes that contribute to the size and shape of your forehead. You may have a different version of that gene that says to have brown eyes. For example, in my DNA instructions, a gene for eye color says I have blue eyes. We all have the same genes, but they can come in slightly different versions. Sections of DNA that are dedicated to a specific trait are called genes. Different aspects of our appearance, like eye color or ear lobe shape, are called traits. How your DNA instruction manual determines how you actually look is a little complicated. Both you and your sibling pick candy from your parentsвЂ™ jars, but the ones you get can be different from each other.ДЄsk a Geneticist How does DNA make us look the way we do? This is the same reason we can get different combinations of DNA instructions from our siblings. The purple jars below show all the different combinations of candy that you could get. You get to pick three pieces of candy from each parentвЂ™s jar, one of each type of candy вЂ“ a lollipop, a candy cane, and a life saver. Imagine that each of your parents have a jar filled with candy. But it is a slightly different mixture from yours (unless you are identical twins)! How can we get different combinations of genes from our parents? Your siblingвЂ™s DNA is also half from mom and half from dad.

Your instructions are a mixture of the instructions your parentsвЂ™ gave you. We all inherit half of our DNA instructions from our mom and half from our dad. Your siblingвЂ™s DNA is a slightly different mixture from yours (unless you are identical twins)!ДЄt this point you might be wondering, if we all have slightly different instruction manuals, why do we sometimes look like our parents or relatives? The reason is because our instructions actually come from our parents! We inherit half of our DNA instructions from our mom and half from our dad. You would both end up with a house, but they could end up looking very different!

LetвЂ™s say your friend is also building a house, but they have a slightly different version of the instruction manual. ItвЂ™s kind of like if you were building a house by following an instruction manual. This is why we donвЂ™t all look like the same person! But we donвЂ™t all have exactly the same DNA instruction manual. All people have some DNA thatвЂ™s the same: we all grow 4 limbs, a heart, skin, a brain, and all the other standard parts of being a person. DNA: the instructions to make us who we areД®very living thing (including us) has a tiny instruction manual inside us, called DNA. Excellent question! What determines all the parts of our physical appearance is not entirely known yet, but there are a few things we do understand about why we look the way we do.