Best friends joked about being twins their whole lives — a DNA test revealed their family secret
Twin specialist Dr. Nancy Segal believes that Doop and Berkley-Andre were likely separated due to China's one-child policy.
Marissa Doop's mother and Zoie Berkley-Andre's mother always joked that their daughters were twins. Their personalities were marked by similarities, from their December birthdays to their everyday behaviors and gestures. The Minnesota moms kept on shrugging off the similarities for the longest time, until about a decade ago, when Berkley-Andre’s mother saw a documentary featuring Dr. Nancy L. Segal, who studies twins. When she reached out to Segal, she conducted some DNA tests, and an entirely new understanding of their relationship came to light, PEOPLE reported on June 12.
The surprising truth
Doop and Berkley-Andre were adopted from the same orphanage in January 2000 when they were just 13 months old. Their relatives often pointed out how astonishingly similar they were. On Doop’s 26th birthday, her grandmother was also surprised by the striking resemblance. Not only did the girls both belong to China, but they also grew up together in Minnesota. Doop revealed that the two girls had known each other since they were babies.
People continued to spot similarities as they grew older. Eventually, both girls secured the same ACT scores and studied chemistry in college. Even their day-to-day habits, like the way they sat and crossed their legs and the way they pronounced words, were all the same. For almost a decade, their parents ignored it, believing all kids adopted from that orphanage are just given the same birthday. But then, about 10 years ago, Berkley-Andre’s mother watched a documentary by Dr. Segal and reached out to her. Dr. Segal suggested a DNA test, and both moms agreed.
To their surprise, the DNA tests revealed that Doop and Berkley-Andre were identical mirror twins. More than the girls, their adoptive parents were thrilled by the news. Emphasizing it, Berkley-Andre recalled, "Our parents thought it was a lot cooler than we did. We were just like, 'It doesn’t matter — it doesn’t make any difference in our relationship.'" Despite being identical twins, Doop and Berkley-Andre had some differences. For instance, while one was left-handed, the other was right-handed. Their wisdom teeth also grew in opposite directions.
The 'one-child' policy
After the test, Doop and Berkley-Andre became part of Segal’s study about twins who were adopted and raised separately. “Twins are probably the best natural experiment we have for understanding who we are and how we got that way,” Segal, a professor and director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, shared. In the study, she highlighted that such pairs were separated due to China’s one-child policy. It was intended to check the country’s population growth and limit urban families to having just one child. The policy led to the abandonment of tens of thousands of toddlers, including those who were twins. Segal learned that the twins, when reunited, became closer over time. Nearly 40 out of 54 pairs, about 75%, developed a closed bond following the reunion.
Meanwhile, fast forward to the present day, and the twin sisters are about 27 years old. Doop works as a barista, whereas Berkley-Andre works as a lab technician in Minneapolis. "I haven’t talked about it much to most people," Berkley-Andre quoted. "It’s my fun fact in ‘two truths and a lie,'" she added.
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