The 'DNA App for Couples' Knows My Kids’ Hair Color

In science, replication is important.

So when a DNA app calledBabyGlimpsesaid it could predict what my children would look like, I wasready.

I have three children, so I could check their results in triplicate.

BabyGlimpse is one of the bazillion DNA testing services that launched last year in partnership withHelix.

You send a spit sample to Helix, and then Helix sequences your DNA and holds onto your data.

The usual caveats about DNA tests also apply.

How It Works

Helix seems tokeep a pretty tight leashon the claims its partners can make.

For example, Europeans with two cytosines (CC) at a location calledrs4988235tend to be lactose intolerant.

(They are fine with milk, but theyre also too young to know for sure.

Even lactose-intolerant kids tend not to show symptoms at first.)

The companys screenshots emphasize hair and eye color and the idea that you might get aglimpse, right?

of your future baby.

Before my husbands results came in, I was able to browse my own.

I have a 68 percent chance of having brown hair, the app guessed.

Thats correctI was blond as a kid but I have brown hair now.

Thats a win: all three of my kids fit that description.

So BabyGlimpse calculates a score based on several different DNA markers.

But the best part is that they put the uncertainty in context.

There may also be an element of pure luck.

I dont know what the difference between those is supposed to be, but okay.

Height didnt seem to check out.

BabyGlimpse said that I was taller than average, and my husband shorter.

According tothis calculatorwere both above average, him more so than me.

The prediction for hair curliness was off, but it also lacked information.

Thats true of me and one of the kids.

So this isnt a particularly useful test.

Theres a prediction for male pattern baldness, which is not exactly a trait we look for in babies.

To be fair, all of these traits are about a persons appearance as an adult.

Plenty of newborns have blond hair and blue or gray eyes, and are very, very short.

Things get a little weirder when you get to the just for fun category.

Gonna have to work hard (like most of us).

Call me skeptical (who, me?)

but I dont think this is a very helpful result.

Especially when they acknowledgeor perhaps guessthat this marker explains less than 5 percent of the genetics at play.

Our children are also likely to have a slight sweet tooth, according to BabyGlimpses interpretation of justone marker.

They will also have the personality of either a strategist or a mixed warrior-strategist according to anothertiny variation.

In any case, I really dont think my kids personality is determined by one nucleotide.

But what would we have done without it?

So, we learned nothing.

But it was kind of fun?

Then again, we were doing that anyway.