The next time you say your best, “I feel like we are connected” or “you family” can support you! A Navalodnaya study published in the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2018 reveals that our friends are genetically more like us than strangers- even if they are not related- and it can play a strange role in how we choose our friends.Although it has long been known that people tend to marry or make friends with similar interests, values or lifestyles, researchers are now deepening how much this connection can be of similar genetics. A study conducted by researchers at Stanford University, Duke University and University of Wisconsin-Medison, have considered more than 5,000 pairs of teenage friends who use data from ADD Health We are long-term we are with us A study that monitored students from 7 to 12 grades from 1994-1995 academic year.
What did the researchers find
Interestingly, the researchers found that friends were more genetically similar to each other than to random individuals in the same population. In fact, the genetic similarity between friends was about two -thirds as between the average marriage couple. According to the author of the study Benjamin Domingo, Associate Professor in Stanford’s postgraduate studies, this genetic similarity is not as strong as siblings, but still statistically significant compared to strangers.
Why are we friends with people who have DNA similar to ours?
One of the possible reasons is the concept called social homophilia. This theory suggests that people naturally form a connection with other similar ones – including features that can be affected by genetics. For example, personality traits, energy levels and even trends to certain habits can be inherited, and this can subtly bring similar people together to their friends.But there is another corner – the social structure. It is an idea that people form relationships in the environment they inhabit, which can affect geneticists themselves. For example, features such as educational achievements or body mass (BMI) have both social and genetic reasons. The study found that friends often share these features. On the other hand, characteristics such as growth – which also genetically did not show a strong similarity among friends, probably because the height does not affect our social choice just as education or lifestyle can do.Studying classmates, the researchers also found something interesting: even among students who were not friends, there were genetic similarities – but it was less. The school was approximately half genetically similar as friends, but still more similar than unfamiliar. This indicates that being only part of one school environment creates genetic clusterization. According to Doming, this conclusion increases how deep our genes and our social environment are, reports time.“Are people who are near people who are similar to them, or this is due to impersonal forces, such as the social structures that we have all affected? His team believes that the answer lies in the structure of more – the schools in which we attend are the surroundings we live, and the families we grow up.Catlin Mullan Harris, co-author and professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, adds that the genetic similarity to schoolchildren can be due to many factors-about geographical location to the parent choice of education. “This is a complex equation, and what the researchers should pay more attention to,” she said.In fact, researchers believe that this study should be a call for genetics. Studying the influence of genes on features such as educational achievements, it is very important to consider the social environment. What may look like a purely genetic effect can actually reflect the general school or community environment.In a nutshell, your friendships may be about more than common interests – they could be written in your genes formed by the environment and caused by invisible forces of both biology and social structure.Intriguing, right? Tell us about your views on this in the comments section below.
