Australian twins helping researchers unlock genetic mysteries in groundbreaking study

Twins are helping Australian researchers crack one of medicine’s biggest mysteries: which diseases are genetic and what’s triggered by the environment.

The groundbreaking study could help unlock more personalised treatment for everyone.

An Australian-first project is recruiting 100 sets of identical and non-identical twins to understand how the immune system works.

“We can then determine how much of these immune cell behaviours relate to what’s inherited versus what might be life experience,” Professor Jason Tye-Din from the Snow Centre for Immune Health said.

Identical twins Jennifer and Catherine Britain may share the same DNA, but they insist they don’t share the same mind.

“I don’t think we finish sentences at all,” Catherine said. “We’re very much individuals.”

Brothers and truckies Peter and Brian Bateman have had very different health issues despite their genetic similarities.

“I’m the first in the family to ever have had cancer,” Peter said. “No other member’s ever had it,” Peter said.

Professor Tye-Din said researchers have recently spoken to identical twins where one developed Crohn’s disease and the other developed multiple sclerosis.

“Now why is this the case? And clearly it means that there’s more than just genetics,” he said.

The study hopes to explain why everyone — not just twins — respond differently to infections, vaccines and treatments and hopefully predict which will work.

“Somebody’s going to get some outcome out of it. If it’s not this generation or it’s not our next generation, it could be 20 or 40 years from now,” Peter said.