Genetics & inheritance
The scientific fundamentals of family resemblance: trait genetics, gene expression, parent-child inheritance. To understand why we look like who we look like.
Resemblance genetics is neither magical nor fully deterministic. Each child inherits 50% of DNA from each parent, but the expression of that DNA — what shows on the face — is not symmetric. This is called genetic dominance: some genes (brown eyes, for example) impose themselves visually even when only one parent transmits them.
This category gathers the scientific fundamentals to understand family resemblance: why a child may look 80% like a parent despite balanced DNA inheritance, how traits skip a generation via recessive genes, what science has proved about newborns' resemblance to their father. You will also find explanations on epigenetics — how environment modifies gene expression without changing DNA sequence, and how some marks transmit over 1-2 generations.
The articles rely on recent scientific literature (Christenfeld, Kamin studies, ACMG work) and remain accessible: no need to be a geneticist to understand.
5 articles
Who Does My Baby Look Like? What Science Can Actually Say
Who does your baby actually look like? Everything genetics, psychology and facial recognition have proven — and what remains a mystery.
Who Does Your Child Look Like? The Science Explained
Genetics explains why your baby sometimes resembles one parent more than the other — and why that changes over time.
Why Does a Child Look More Like One Parent Than the Other?
50% DNA from each parent, yet 80% visual from just one. Why this asymmetry? The real genetic reasons.
Why Newborns Look More Like Their Father: The Evolutionary Theory
"He looks just like his dad!" — the ritual maternity phrase. Evolutionary theory, conflicting studies, perceptual biases: what to take away.
What Eye Colour Will My Baby Have? Genetics Explains
The "20/80" calculation is wrong. Eye genetics involves 16+ genes. Here's the real explanation, and the real probabilities.
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