How is hair color inherited




















You have the blond allele, you have blond hair. Brown allele, brown hair. You got one from each of your parents. It turns out that brown hair is dominant.

That means that even if only one of your two alleles is for brown hair, your hair will be brown. The blond allele is recessive , and gets covered up. You can think of recessive alleles as t-shirts, and dominant ones as jackets. If you wear one of each, only the jacket will be visible. Since you have two copies of each gene, that means the only way to have a recessive feature like blond hair is for both of them to be the recessive allele. This is what both of our brown-haired parents had going on.

They were secretly wearing blond shirts under their brunette jackets, and when it came time for each of them to pass down one item of clothing to their kid, they both gave the shirt! With this analogy, you can also see how two blond parents should never have a brown-haired child. No matter which genes they pass down, their kid should end up blond.

Melanocytes make the pigment that gives our body color: melanin. There are two types of melanin in your hair, eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is brown or black, and pheomelanin has a reddish color.

If the receptor is not activated or is blocked, melanocytes make pheomelanin instead of eumelanin. Many other genes also help to regulate this process. Most people have two functioning copies of the MC1R gene, one inherited from each parent. These individuals have black or brown hair, because of the high amount of eumelanin. It is estimated that more than 90 percent of people in the world have brown or black hair.

Some people have variations in one copy of the MC1R gene in each cell that causes the gene to be turned off deactivated. This type of genetic change is described as loss-of-function. For these individuals, eumelanin production is lower, while pheomelanin production is higher, so they have strawberry blond, auburn, or red hair. In an even smaller percentage of people, both copies of the MC1R gene in each cell have loss-of-function changes, and the melanin-production pathway produces only the pheomelanin pigment.

The hair of these individuals is almost always very red. Even when the melanin-production pathway is making eumelanin, changes in other genes can reduce the amount of eumelanin produced. These changes lead to blond hair. Hair color ranges across a wide spectrum of hues, from flaxen blond to coal black. Many genes other than MC1R play a role in determining shades of hair color by controlling levels of eumelanin and pheomelanin. Some of these genes are associated with gene transcription which is the first step in protein production , DNA repair, the transport of substances such as calcium across cell membranes, or the structure of hair follicles.

Several of these genes contribute to eye and skin color, but the exact role they play in determining hair color is unknown.

Hair color may change over time. Particularly in people of European descent, light hair color may darken as individuals grow older. For example, blond-haired children often have darker hair by the time they are teenagers.

Researchers speculate that certain hair-pigment proteins are activated as children grow older, perhaps in response to hormonal changes that occur near puberty. Gray hair is partly hereditary and may vary by ethnic origin; it is also somewhat dependent on external factors such as stress.

Hair becomes gray when the hair follicle loses its ability to make melanin, but exactly why that occurs is not clear. Model-based prediction of human hair color using DNA variants. Hum Genet. This disorder is caused by a gene mutation. There are several different types of albinism that affect people in different ways. Many are born with white or light hair, but a range of colors is also possible.

This condition can cause vision problems and sun sensitivity. Though some children are born with very light blonde hair, children with albinism will typically have white eyelashes and eyebrows. Albinism is an inherited condition that happens when both parents pass along the mutation. If you are concerned about this condition, you may want to speak with your doctor or a genetic counselor. So, what color hair will your baby have?

But it will take some time to fully develop into the exact shade it will be. The chemical processes involved in dyeing your hair blonde or a lighter shade can lead to hair color woes such as orange tones.

Learn why this happens…. How common is it for someone to have red hair and blue eyes? What causes these unique traits? And are people with red hair and blue eyes going extinct? Albinism is a rare condition that causes the skin, hair, or eyes to have little or no color. It also leads to vision problems. Discover causes…. A new study finds that epidurals do not affect child development in their later years.



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