direction to look into lasting happiness. Could he find a genetic profile of people who had been happily married for longer than a decade?â
Lisa swiped the animation forward to show an older computer-generated couple sitting on a couch, cuddling. The view zoomed back to show a neighborhood, and then a city, and then farther until the city map looked like a double-helix strand of DNA. âFrom a study of over three hundred couples,â Lisa continued, âDr. Peña found nearly two hundred genes that were linked to emotional compatibility long-term, including the same forty genes associated with attraction, as well as many other previously uncorrelated ones.â She paused, looking at them. âThis was only the first generation of the DNADuo.â
Beside Jess, Fizzy was sitting up at full attention, completely plugged in. But Jess was skeptical. What Lisa was describing was essentially a slot machine with two hundred reels. Statistically speaking, landing on the right combination was an absurdly low-probability event. Even if GeneticAlly was just looking for pattern compatibility, with the number of variants of every gene in the human genome, this type of algorithm was so complex as to be nearly impossible to calculate manually. She couldnât see how they would begin to process the amount of data they were facing.
Lisa seemed to read her mind. âTwo hundred is a lot of genes, and the human genome is made up of at least twenty thousand. Of course, not all of theseâmaybe not even mostâare involved in our emotional satisfaction. But Drs. Peña and Morris wanted to find every last one. They didnât just want to identify compatibility, they wanted to help you find your soulmate. Which is exactly why Dr. Peña collaborated with Caltech to develop a novel deep neural network.â
She let these words sink in as the slide became animated again,diving into the double helix, highlighting base fragments as it whizzed along the length of the DNA strand.
âThis project has encompassed personality tests, brain scans, longitudinal studies of relationship success, andâyesâwell over one hundred thousand samples run through DNA sequencing and analysis.â She looked each of them dead in the eye. âThe investors have put over thirty million dollars into the technology alone. The app developers have invested almost five million. Do I think we have a truly groundbreaking system?â She nodded. âBetween us? In all honesty? I do.â
Swiping forward, she lifted her chin to the screen, where a woman stood alone against a stark white backdrop. âHereâs how it works. Weâve developed a kit like many genetic profiling companies, which, very soon, customers will be able to order by mail. We have kits here for purchase, if youâre interested.â
Jess could sense Fizzy itching to pull out her credit card. Lisa picked up a small box on the table; it was white, the simple DNADuo logo printed in rainbow colors. âOnce we fully launch, clients will send in their sample for analysis by our DNADuo algorithm, which now combines findings from over thirty-five hundred genes. Once received, analysis takes only about three days for the results to load into your DNADuo app. While you wait, you can enter information about yourself in your profileâthe same way that you would on other dating sites. Information about your age, location, professionâwhatever you want people to know about you. Once your results are in, weâll share with you the compatibility scores based on the criteria youâve chosen.â
Jess swallowed audibly. All of this sounded so⦠thorough.
The slide now showed two people standing side by side before the same empty backdrop. âThrough rigorous analysis, weâve created scoring bins. That is, we group the scores based on how tightly they correlate to relationship success. If you pull two random people off the
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