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t m c » p u l s e | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 Dating App Taps Genetics and Social Media Scientists offer a new recipe for love B y B r i t n i R . M c A s h a n Y ears before she became a genetic scientist, Brittany Barreto dreamed of creating a way for people to find love through DNA. "I just thought it would be so cool to connect people on a roman- tic level using their DNA," said Barreto, co-founder and CEO of Pheramor, a dating app that aims to measure compatibility using physical chemistry and social rapport. "It's nothing like designer babies or anything like that. It is, essentially, how do your genes affect who you are attracted to and who you jive with the best? How is that inscribed in your genome?" Nearly a decade and a Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine later, Barreto set her plan into action. While attending a workshop hosted by Enventure—a grassroots life science startup community in Houston—she met Bin Huang, Ph.D., who became the co-founder and chief technological officer of Pheramor. "I pitched the idea at their accelerator program and Bin, who was a doctoral candidate at Rice University at the time, also pitched an idea, but then at the end, when we had to make teams, he came up to me and said, 'Forget my idea, I want to do your idea,'" Barreto recalled. "I know the genetics behind attrac- tion and Bin knows the techy side and he is on the back end writing the algorithm that is literally matching people." Pheramor brings couples together after analyzing a seg- ment of each candidate's human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene complex—proteins that regulate the immune system—and social media history. It is one of a handful of companies launched over the past decade that uses genetics to determine romantic compatibility. The HLA complex helps the immune system distinguish the body's own proteins from pro- teins made by foreign invaders, such as viruses and bacteria. "We are seeking a partner that has a different immune system compared to our own because that means that we are not related, so we will have a decreased risk of genetic disease in our progeny and our progeny will have a more diverse set of immune system genes and there- fore be immune to more pathogens," Barreto explained. Animals also prefer mates with complementary immune systems and communicate this information through olfactory cues. The genes associated with their immune sys- tems are tethered to pheromones, chemicals animals produce and emit that influence all sort of behav- ior among others in their species— including sexual attraction. But there is no hard science on humans releasing or picking up on pheromones, in part because animals use the vomeronasal organ (VNO)—a gathering of sensory cells in the nasal cavity above the roof of the mouth—to detect pheromones, and humans do not have a function- ing VNO. ➟ Brittany Barreto, Ph.D., is the CEO and co-founder of Pheramor, a dating app.