Manel: I'm really interested to know how the pairs of people reacted with their doppelgangers. How did they react to finding they even shared DNA? Manel: People when they connect, they like each other because they're liking themselves at the end. And this can be useful in the screening of genetic disorders. For example, you can say this person may be she or she has a genetic disease and we can intercept the disorder before it has a clinical phenotype. So we can do some kind of preventive genetics medicine.
The thing about doppelgangers is that despite looking almost identical, they aren’t biologically related. So, what makes them appear so similar? How do totally different people end up with the same face? And, can studying doppelgangers tell us anything about the age-old question of nature v nurture? Madeleine Finlay speaks to Dr Manel Esteller to find out. Help support our independent journalism at
theguardian.com/sciencepod