You can tell a lot about a person from their handshake, but you can tell even more when you take samples from their shaking hand and run it through a bunch of high tech equipment. That, in a nutshell, is precisely what researchers are doing when they undertake collagen sequencing.

Collagen makes up 20-30% of our body’s protein, and is so durable that ancient fossils still have analyzable samples thousands of years later, even when all the DNA dried up long ago. This lets us get extremely detailed information on the genetic history of extinct animals, and is one of the things that makes collagen sequencing so interesting. So far it’s mostly been used to tell us about the history of various animals. But it can also be used on living things, including people, in which case it says a lot about their family history, genetic traits and overall biology. So what good is that? Well, it can warn you about lethal hereditary diseases, propensity for mental illness like schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s down the line, how likely children are to develop some of their parents’ traits and a lot more. But more importantly, it could be a great way to find your perfect partner.

Most people probably have a mental list of what they want in a partner (funny, good looking, ridiculously wealthy, etc), but scientists have gone a bit deeper to pick out why exactly some people are attracted to others. What they discovered was that it’s largely down to genetics. One of the ways this manifested was through pheromones, as communicated by smells. In one study, they had a bunch of women sniff a lot of sweaty men’s shirts, and then rate the guys for being attractive based on smell alone. Across the board, women rated the hottest-smelling guys as those who were genetically very different from themselves. This has happened in every single experiment of its kind. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense. Wider genetic variety means healthier babies. Scientifically speaking, it’s the exact opposite of incest.

Collagen sequencing lets us take all the sweaty shirts out of the equation. Comparing two peoples’ collagen samples is theoretically enough to say whether or not they’d enjoy smelling each other’s sweat and whether or not they’re biologically compatible. Obviously this isn’t enough. There are a lot of factors to take into account, but collagen sequencing can potentially untangle most of them. Finding one’s perfect partner is a game of chance, but collagen sequencing is more than enough to tip the odds in your favor. Or at least, enough to exclude all the people whose sweat you wouldn’t enjoy sniffing. OROGOLD believes that developments in collagen sequencing will most likely usher in a new age of easy, convenient matchmaking, because like it or not, mutual sweat appreciation is the basis of all healthy relationships.