If your friends feel like family, there’s a good reason for it

Jul 15, 2014 01:00 pm

The truism that friends are the family you choose may be more accurate than you might suppose.

A study published on Monday found that people are apt to pick friends who are genetically similar to themselves – so much so that friends tend to be as alike at the genetic level as a person’s fourth cousin.

The findings were based on an examination of about 1.5 million markers of genetic variations in a group of nearly 2,000 people who had taken part in a long-running health study based in Massachusetts.

The study showed people were most similar to their friends in olfactory genes, which involve the sense of smell, and were least similar in relation to immune system genes.

“Olfactory genes have a straightforward explanation: People who like the same smells tend to be drawn to similar environments, where they meet others with the same tendencies,” said one of the researchers, James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego.

The study, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, follows research released in May that found that people tended to choose spouses who have similar DNA.