Five Genes Help Form a FaceThis work has been going on for quite some time. This article was published in 2012. Additionally, there are obvious effects of environmental influences, such as nutritional intake, which alter the general appearance of the face.
Five genes emerged as important to facial features, Kayser and his colleagues report today in PLoS Genetics. The genes influenced traits such as the width of the face, the distance between the eyes, and how far the nose sticks out.
However, it's not quite as simple as that...
On the downside, the work confirms what many had suspected. There are no common variants with large effects. It is likely that there are many hundreds or thousands of these variants each having a small influence on the face.
LINK:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/09/five-genes-help-form-face