The Mystery on How to Tell Twins Apart Revealed; Melting Points of Twins' DNA Tells the Difference
The British scientists have finally discovered a new method which can be used to tell apart identical twins. The method which they used involved using the melting points of the twins' DNA.
The study stresses on the fact that this new discovery can help the police to solve cases easily now, as they will not have to worry about twins who blame on each other for a crime, states New Scientist. To carry out this study, the researchers worked with 2 sets of twins and swabbed their cheeks.
This swab had their DNA contained in it, and it was then heated. After sometime, the researchers noted the melting point of each DNA, which is nothing but the temperature at which the hydrogen bonds of the DNA break up. They noted that each DNA had a different melting point and broke at a different temperature.
This happened due to difference of the twins' lifestyle, which includes habits like smoking and exposure to the sunlight, states HNGN. Hence, they were able to uniquely identify the twins, based in their DNA.
This is not the first time that an attempt to tell twins apart has been made. Earlier, genetic mutations were used to mark the difference between twins, but this method was not very effective.
According to the lead researcher Graham Williams, this method was very expensive and not very viable. He did not think that the police had the kind of time and money to spend on a method such as genetic mutations. So even though it was very much possible to separately identify the location of a mutation in twins, this method was rubbished off.