Microbes from you, microbes from me

It is sometimes said that two people in a relationship start to look more and more alike. This seems to depend a bit on the extent of the magnification.

At BBC Science Focus, someone took a closer look at this question. Because two people look more alike in a relationship? And I don’t mean that they wear the same ANWB jacket, but they actually have more physical similarities. Stanford University researchers studied 517 pairs. When they first met and decades later. They saw that long-term pairs were already quite alike, but that hasn’t changed over time. This indicates that we are looking for someone.

However, it is also true that in a relationship we begin to resemble more and more. You can only see it if you zoom in well. A previous study of the microbes on our skin showed that they are indeed adapting to the partner’s microbes. This is especially true of the microbes on our feet. An algorithm was even able to match people as partners with 86 percent accuracy based solely on the microbes on their skin.

Read more: You share everything with your partner…even your skin’s microbiome†