Charlie Chasen and Michael Malone met in Atlanta in 1997, when Mr. Malone served as a guest singer in Mr. Chasen’s band. They quickly became friends, but they didn’t notice what other people around them did: The two men could pass for twins.

查理·蔡森和邁克爾·馬龍于1997年在亞特蘭大相識(shí)，當(dāng)時(shí)馬龍?jiān)诓躺臉逢?duì)中擔(dān)任客座歌手。他們很快成為了朋友，但他們沒有注意到周圍的人是如何看待他們的：這兩個(gè)男人看上去完全可以是雙胞胎。

Mr. Malone and Mr. Chasen are doppelg?ngers. They look strikingly similar, but they are not related. Their immediate ancestors aren’t even from the same parts of the world; Mr. Chasen’s forebears hailed from Lithuania and Scotland, while Mr. Malone’s parents are from the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

馬龍和蔡森是所謂的“二重身”——他們的相貌驚人地相似，卻沒有血緣關(guān)系。他們的直系祖先甚至不是來自世界的同一個(gè)地方；蔡森的祖先來自立陶宛和蘇格蘭，馬龍的父母來自多米尼加共和國(guó)和巴哈馬群島。

The two friends, along with hundreds of other unrelated look-alikes, participated in a photography project by Fran?ois Brunelle, a Canadian artist. The picture series, “I’m not a look-alike!,” was inspired by Mr. Brunelle’s discovery of his own look-alike, the English actor Rowan Atkinson.

這兩個(gè)朋友，以及其他數(shù)百名沒有親戚關(guān)系的相貌相似者參加了加拿大藝術(shù)家弗朗索瓦·布魯內(nèi)爾的一個(gè)攝影計(jì)劃。這個(gè)作品系列名為“我不是高仿！”，靈感來自布魯內(nèi)爾發(fā)現(xiàn)了他自己的“高仿版”——英國(guó)演員羅溫·阿特金森。

The project has been a hit on social media and other parts of the internet, but it’s also drawn the attention of scientists who study genetic relationships. Dr. Manel Esteller, a researcher at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain, had previously studied the physical differences between identical twins, and he wanted to examine the reverse: people who look alike but aren’t related. “What’s the explanation for these people?” he wondered.

該計(jì)劃在社交媒體和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的一些地方引起了轟動(dòng)，但也吸引了研究基因關(guān)系的科學(xué)家注意。西班牙巴塞羅那何塞·卡雷拉斯白血病研究所的研究員曼內(nèi)爾·埃斯特勒博士此前曾研究過同卵雙胞胎之間的生理差異，他想研究的是相反的情況：長(zhǎng)得很像但沒有血緣關(guān)系的人。“該怎么解釋這些人？”他想。

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports, Dr. Esteller and his team recruited 32 pairs of look-alikes from Mr. Brunelle’s photographs to take DNA tests and complete questionnaires about their lifestyles. The researchers used facial recognition software to quantify the similarities between the participants’ faces. Sixteen of those 32 pairs achieved similar overall scores to identical twins analyzed by the same software. The researchers then compared the DNA of these 16 pairs of doppelg?ngers to see if their DNA was as similar as their faces.

周二發(fā)表在《細(xì)胞報(bào)告》(Cell Reports)期刊上的一項(xiàng)研究中，埃斯特勒和他的團(tuán)隊(duì)從布魯內(nèi)爾的攝影活動(dòng)中招募了32對(duì)長(zhǎng)得很像的人進(jìn)行DNA測(cè)試，并完成有關(guān)他們生活方式的問卷調(diào)查。研究人員使用面部識(shí)別軟件來量化參與者面部的相似性。在這32對(duì)參與者中，有16對(duì)的總體得分與使用同一軟件分析的同卵雙胞胎相似。然后，研究人員比較了這16對(duì)二重身的DNA，研究他們的DNA是否和他們的外貌一樣相似。

Dr. Esteller found that the 16 pairs who were “true” look-alikes shared significantly more of their genes than the other 16 pairs that the software deemed less similar. “These people really look alike because they share important parts of the genome, or the DNA sequence,” he said. That people who look more alike have more genes in common “would seem like common sense, but never had been shown,” he added.

埃斯特勒發(fā)現(xiàn)，與軟件認(rèn)為不太相似的另外16對(duì)參與者相比，16對(duì)相貌“真正”相似的參與者的基因共享程度要高得多。“這些人看起來真的很像，因?yàn)樗麄儞碛型瑯拥幕蚪M或DNA序列的重要部分，”他說。長(zhǎng)得更像的人擁有更多的共同基因，“這似乎是常識(shí)，但從來沒有被證明過，”他補(bǔ)充說。

However, DNA alone doesn’t tell the whole story of our makeup. Our lived experiences, and those of our ancestors, influence which of our genes are switched on or off — what scientists call our epigenomes. And our microbiome, our microscopic co-pilot made up of bacteria, fungi and viruses, is further influenced by our environment. Dr. Esteller found that while the doppelg?ngers’ genomes were similar, their epigenomes and microbiomes were different. “Genetics put them together, and epigenetics and microbiome pulls them apart,” he said.

然而，DNA本身并不能說明我們身體的全部情況。我們的生活經(jīng)歷，以及我們祖先的生活經(jīng)歷，會(huì)影響我們基因的開啟或關(guān)閉——科學(xué)家稱之為我們的表觀基因組。我們身體中的的微生物組——由細(xì)菌、真菌和病毒組成的微觀副駕駛——進(jìn)一步受到環(huán)境的影響。埃斯特勒發(fā)現(xiàn)，雖然二重身的基因組很相似，但他們的表觀基因組和微生物組卻不同。“遺傳學(xué)把他們放在一起，表觀遺傳學(xué)和微生物組則把他們分開，”他說。

This discrepancy tells us that the pairs’ similar appearances have more to do with their DNA than with the environments they grew up in. That surprised Dr. Esteller, who had expected to see a bigger environmental influence.

這種差異告訴我們，外表相似的兩人更多與其DNA有關(guān)，而不是與成長(zhǎng)環(huán)境有關(guān)。這讓埃斯特勒感到驚訝，他原本預(yù)計(jì)會(huì)看到更大的環(huán)境影響。

Because the doppelg?ngers’ appearances are more attributable to shared genes than shared life experiences, that means that, to some extent, their similarities are just the luck of the draw, spurred on by population growth. There are, after all, only so many ways to build a face.

因?yàn)槎厣淼拈L(zhǎng)相更多要?dú)w因于共同的基因而不是共同的人生經(jīng)歷，這意味著在某種程度上，他們的相似只是人口增長(zhǎng)作用下的偶然事件。畢竟，長(zhǎng)相的生成模式只有那么多。

“Now there are so many people in the world that the system is repeating itself,” Dr. Esteller said. It’s not unreasonable to assume that you, too, might have a look-alike out there.

“現(xiàn)在世界上人太多了，這個(gè)系統(tǒng)正在自我重復(fù)，”埃斯特勒說。某個(gè)地方也可能會(huì)有跟你長(zhǎng)得很像的人，這種假設(shè)不是沒有道理。
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Dr. Esteller is hopeful that the study’s findings will help doctors diagnose illness in the future — if people have similar enough genes to look alike, they might share predilections for diseases too.

埃斯特勒希望該研究結(jié)果能在未來有助于醫(yī)生診斷疾病——如果人們的基因相似到長(zhǎng)相也相似，那或許他們的易患疾病也是相同的。

“There seems to be something pretty strong in terms of genetics that is making two individuals who look alike also having genome-wide similar profiles,” said Olivier Elemento, the director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, who was not involved with the study. Discrepancies between DNA’s predictions and people’s actual appearances might alx doctors to problems, he said.

“兩個(gè)長(zhǎng)相相似的個(gè)體也擁有相似的全基因組圖譜，這可能與遺傳學(xué)有很大關(guān)系，”紐約威爾康奈爾醫(yī)學(xué)院英格蘭德精準(zhǔn)醫(yī)學(xué)研究所所長(zhǎng)奧利維爾·埃萊門托說，他并未參與這項(xiàng)研究。他表示，如果DNA預(yù)測(cè)的結(jié)果和人的實(shí)際外貌不一致，這就可能值得醫(yī)生的警惕。

Dr. Esteller also suggested that there could be lixs between facial features and behavioral patterns, and that the study’s findings might one day aid forensic science by providing a glimpse of the faces of criminal suspects known only from DNA samples. However, Daphne Martschenko, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics who was not involved with the study, urged caution in applying its findings to forensics.

埃斯特勒還表示，面部特征和行為模式之間可能存在聯(lián)系，該研究結(jié)果或許也能在未來助力司法科學(xué)研究，僅靠DNA樣本就能一窺犯罪嫌疑人的長(zhǎng)相。并未參與這項(xiàng)研究的斯坦福大學(xué)生物醫(yī)學(xué)倫理中心博士后研究員達(dá)芙妮·馬爾琴科表示，此研究結(jié)果在司法鑒定中的應(yīng)用需要謹(jǐn)慎。

“We’ve already seen plenty of examples of how existing facial algorithms have been used to reinforce existing racial bias in things like housing and job hiring and criminal profiling,” Dr. Martschenko said, adding that the study “raises a lot of important ethical considerations.”

“我們已經(jīng)看到有大量案例表明，在住房、就業(yè)和犯罪分析等問題上，現(xiàn)有面部算法是如何被用于強(qiáng)化現(xiàn)存種族偏見的，”馬爾琴科表示，她還說，該研究“引發(fā)了許多重要的倫理考量”。
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Despite the potential pitfalls of lixing people’s appearances with their DNA or their behavior, Mr. Malone and Mr. Chasen said the look-alike project, and the knowledge that we all might have a secret twin out there, was a means of bringing people together. The two have remained friends for 25 years; when Mr. Chasen got married last week, Mr. Malone was the first person he called. While not everyone with similar DNA shares such a bond, Mr. Malone said that he saw Mr. Brunelle’s photography project as “another way to connect all of us in the human race.”

盡管將人的長(zhǎng)相與其DNA或行為進(jìn)行關(guān)聯(lián)存在隱患，但馬龍和蔡森表示，這個(gè)外貌雷同計(jì)劃，以及知道每個(gè)人可能都有一個(gè)未知的雙胞胎兄弟姐妹這一點(diǎn)可以拉近人們的距離。他們兩人的友誼已經(jīng)持續(xù)了25年；蔡森上周結(jié)婚時(shí)，馬龍是他第一個(gè)去電通知的對(duì)象。雖然不是所有DNA相似的人都能有這樣的紐帶，但馬龍說，他認(rèn)為布魯內(nèi)爾的攝影計(jì)劃是“又一種將人類所有成員連結(jié)到一起的辦法”。

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