We are the parents of two sweet six-month-old homozygous twins and I am already annoyed by those who talk about identical girls or, worse, clones. Is there any hope of making others understand that defining them as “equal” is an understatement? – Nadia
I have two 13-year-old heterozygous twin daughters who have always little alike: one has curly hair and the other straight, one has very fair complexion and the other darker, they also have different height and eye color. Yet for years I have suffered the inevitable question: “But are they identical?”. I replied “obviously not”, but once a relative of mine didn’t believe me: “But yes, they are identical”, he said to his wife. “Only they are the parents so they know how to distinguish them”. This anecdote makes you realize that it will be hard to convince the world that your daughters are not the same. Fortunately, scientific progress works in your favor: a study published a few months ago in Nature Genetics revealed that the genetic differences between homozygous twins are much more numerous than previously thought and develop very quickly in the two embryos. Since homozygous twins are often used in scientific research to measure the environmental impact on two identical individuals, this is a very important discovery in the scientific world. Icelandic neurologist Kári Stefánsson, one of the authors of the research, said: “Today I am less and less inclined to define identical as homozygous twins.” And that’s what you can answer: scientifically two identical people do not exist, your daughters are very similar but they are not the same.
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