• Question: Do twins have the same DNA? If so how would you tell if they did something wrong?

    Asked by Ginger to Aimee on 18 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Aimee Goodall

      Aimee Goodall answered on 18 Nov 2015:


      Great question!
      My brother and sister are twins and don’t have the same DNA as one is a boy and one a girl.
      There are identical twins who do have the same DNA, and this can be tricky for Forensic Scientists.
      One way to find out which twin it is would be to work out if Twin A was at work while Twin B carried out a crime, that can sometimes work.
      With the DNA there are sections which change as we get older, due to our environment, if the scientist looks at smaller parts of the DNA which change they can find out which twin it was, but that is very expensive, so they try to work it out by other ways first.

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