• Question: why do we look alike our parents or relatives?

    Asked by Abi_256 to Reka on 16 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Ria.s, amazing a bhatti.
    • Photo: Reka Nagy

      Reka Nagy answered on 16 Nov 2016:

      Because we share more of our DNA with them!
      DNA is the chemical that acts as the blueprint or instruction manual telling our cells how to make us. It consists of letters, called bases – about 3 billion of these.
      All humans have the same letters in most of their DNA, in 99.9% of places in fact! So we only differ in the remaining 0.1%. However, because we inherit a combination of our parent’s DNA, we inherit this remaining 0.1% from them as well – half from mum, half from dad – which is why we are more similar to them than to a random person.

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