Parents' eye color is not passed on to children
Parents' eye color is not passed on to children

Video: Parents' eye color is not passed on to children

Video: Parents' eye color is not passed on to children
Video: Should Parents Predetermine a Child’s Traits like Eye Color? 2024, November
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Traditionally, it is believed that eye color is transmitted to humans genetically from their parents. But research by a team of scientists in Queensland, Australia, soon to be published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that there are no genes that could transmit eye color from parents to children.

The study was conducted with the participation of four thousand volunteers, among whom were many twins and close relatives. The results of the study showed that there is no specific gene that is responsible for eye color and is inherited.

Only six “letters” in human DNA are responsible for eye color. The color depends on the order in which they line up. According to researcher Richard Sturm, a member of the working group, "some" letters "seem to turn on or off the light, making the eyes lighter or darker, while others give them different shades." For example, scientists were able to identify three sequences that are closely related to the appearance of blue.

All of these processes take place in a gene called OCA2. It produces a protein that is responsible for the color of our skin, hair and eyes. It is the mutations of this gene that give rise to albinos.

Mononucleotide polymorphisms at the start of the OCA2 gene most likely regulate how much pigment protein the gene produces. People with brown eyes produce the most pigment, while people with blue eyes produce the least. A chain variant in another region of the gene is associated with the appearance of a green iris. Overall, the polymorphisms found during the study are responsible for 74% of all possible changes in eye color.

But, of course, parental genes still have a strong influence on all the DNA sequences of the child, including the formation of the code that is responsible for the color of the eyes.

In the words of scientists, the human body owes the appearance of multi-colored irises to variants of mononucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in a particular gene.

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