Face-to-face search for genetic switches (6/9/2008)

A new investigation into how genes determine our facial appearance is to be launched by Cambridge University.

The five-year study, which is being part-funded by the Kuwaiti businessman Jassim Al-Bahar, will attempt to identify the genetic "switches" which govern characteristics such as facial structure, pigmentation and eye colour, using data from communities in the Persian Gulf.

Researchers hope that by showing how physical appearances are dictated by genetics, they will be able to emphasise the "unity in diversity" of people living in a part of the world where class and tribal divisions sometimes still run deep.

In the long-term, they also hope to build up a picture of how the genes that affect people's facial characteristics have evolved over time, as they adapted to different environments, underwent cultural transformations and as climate change occurred.

The project will be led by Dr Talal Mohammad, a researcher in the University of Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for Evolutionary Studies.

"Facial differences allow people to recognise each other within a fraction of a second, but any attempt to evaluate the genetic factors that determine a person's appearance is a highly complex process," he said.

"This project will try to identify where normal variation in appearance is a consequence of natural variation in a person's genetic make-up. The main question we want to answer is what, genetically, makes people different from one another?

"I believe the fact that we can show physical traits to be a consequence of genetic structure brings people together. By proving that everybody is genetically different from everybody else, we can essentially dismiss the notion that our physical appearance is a result of our social grouping as fantasy."

The research will be carried out initially in Kuwait and Iran, although permission is being sought for the project to be carried out in a number of the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf as well. The genetic data will be gathered from saliva swabs, three-dimensional computer scans and spectrometer readings to test pigmentation. In time, the researchers hope to be able to identify when and where the genetic differences that determine people's looks first developed.

They will also test whether the patterns of genetic evolution they find fit with the "Out of Africa" theory. The theory, proposed by many scholars, argues that modern-day humans are the result of a single migration from Africa which took place between 40 and 60 thousand years ago.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Cambridge University

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