12 Facts About Redheads You Didnt Know: the Science Behind Red Hair
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Mad Men star Jessica Chastain, however, is actually a bona fide redhead with blue eyes. The chances for red hair depend entirely on whether or not your husband carries a hidden red hair gene. The main genes responsible are OCA2 and HERC2, located on chromosome 15. Several common variations in the OCA2 gene result in less melanin in the iris, leading to blue eyes instead of brown in people that carry the variation. When a person has a child, they can pass their recessive gene information to their offspring, and the trait could win out.
How Common Are People with Red Hair and Blue Eyes?
The fading of hair color is more noticeable in natural redheads than in people with dyed red hair. Fading can be combated with color depositing shampoos, hair glazes, and hair glosses. In the array of possible natural hair colors, dark hues are the most common — more than 90 percent of people worldwide have brown or black hair.
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In the past, when populations were moreisolated, genetic variations were more concentrated within certaincommunities. This concentration of genetic traits, including the blue eyemutation, may have given the false impression of a connection between blueeyes and incest. In the case of red hair color, due to the malfunction of the MC1R gene, the pheomelanin in the hair follicles, builds up and is not converted into eumelanin. The stable and reddish nature of the pheomelanin molecules cause the resultant red hair color. The inheritance of red hair color depends on the hair color of the parents.
Biochemistry and genetics
The iris has multiple layers, and pigments at these different layers are part of what gives the iris its color. For example, brown eyes have lots of melanocytes and thus higher amounts of melanin than blue eyes. Thickness also affects color — it determines if you're sporting blue-gray, green, or hazel eyes. Scientists originally thought eye colour was determined by a single gene and followed a simple inheritance pattern in which brown eyes were dominant to blue eyes. However, later studies showed this model was too simplistic and there are multiple genes involved in eye colour.
If both parents have this quality, then it is inherited by the child. But in the case of only one parent exhibiting dimples, the child may or may not show its presence. In any given species, the genetic makeup is uniform across a population. The attributes that differentiate one individual from another arise from variations in the genome. These mutations may have a negative or positive effect depending on the gene that is altered. This BiologyWise article provides an understanding of mutations and their effects.
This Is the Rarest Hair Color and Eye Color Combination in Humans - Reader's Digest
This Is the Rarest Hair Color and Eye Color Combination in Humans.
Posted: Fri, 15 Sep 2017 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Red hair frequency is especially significant among the Riffians from Morocco and Kabyles from Algeria,[26][27][28] respectively. These examples gives one an understanding of the complex and intricate nature of genetic mutations. While most of the mutations are harmless and responsible for the physical variation across a species, some mutations do cause life-altering health conditions. Scientists are still working hard to decipher the function of each particular gene and the interactions between them.
Experts Reveal the Most Flattering Hair Colors For Blue Eyes
Madison Reed’s haircare blog says redheads have 90,000 strands on average, while blonds have 110,000 and brunettes have 140,000. While it’s slightly easier to determine the odds of having red hair, green eyes are more difficult to predict. Also critical to how common a color combination is within a given population is which alleles are circulating. For example, alleles of the gene OCA2 determine whether someone has brown or not-brown eyes. They can provide surprising insight into your personality, health status and where you came from in the big story of human history.
Surprising Redhead Facts Beyond The MC1R Gene You Have To Know
Blonde hair is found naturally on only 3% of the global population. The vast majority of natural blondes are found in Northern and Western Europe. This is because they will both pass on their “red hair” DNA to their child. Even if one parent does not have red hair, they can still pass on the red hair allele to their child.
This mutation results in red hair, and makes redheads uniquely beautiful. The rarest eye color is green, which occurs in only about 9% of Americans and 2% of the world’s population. Brown is the most common eye color, occurring in 45% of Americans and possibly up to 80% of the world’s population. While redheads are born all throughout the world, they’re more likely to crop up in the Northern hemisphere. Though about 1-2% of the general world population has the red hair gene, that percentage rises to 2 to 6 percent north of the equator.
The same way that they have red hair on their head, redheads have red pubic hair. The color of a person’s pubic hair is determined by the same pigment that determines the color of their hair – melanin. Redheads have a higher concentration of melanin in their hair, which is why their hair is red. This same concentration of melanin also gives redheads red pubic hair.
Those kids that get the r from your husband will be redheads. If he could have one gene, MC1R, sequenced, he would have a pretty good idea about whether or not he is a carrier. Some, but not all carriers of the red hair gene have freckles so this can be a hint. But there are people without freckles who carry a red hair gene too (me, for example). The iris doesn't actually have red, pink, or violet pigment, though.
However, their hair isn't the only thing that sets them apart - genetic differences can affect everything from their pain threshold to how easily they bruise. Several studies have revealed a surprising, non-visible effect of the MC1R mutation. They found that redheads have a different response to pain than people with other hair colours. Red hair originates from mutations in a gene involved in skin and hair pigmentation, called melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) on chromosome 16. “But although it is recessive, red hair is unlikely to suffer from this effect. Even when we can’t always see red hair, many people still carry the genes.
But the relationship between hair color and eye color is complex (via Twin Research and Human Genetics). There are numerous genes responsible for eye color, and some of these same genes mess with hair color gene expression, creating a thicket of overlapping variables that determine coloring (via Nature). Then you have something in common with most people around the globe.
This combination of factors makes the chances of having both red hair and blue eyes quite rare. You might have heard that red hair and blue eyes are the rarest hair and eye colour combinations on earth. Only around 2% of the global population is blessed with red hair. So, if you’re blessed with this unique colour combination, count yourself lucky!
According to the World Atlas, between 75% and 85% of the global population has dark brown or black hair, and 70% to 79% of people have brown eyes. It’s not exactly the rarest hair color and eye color combination. In a caucasian Netherlands population, where more redheads can be found for their study, researchers in Twin Research and Human Genetics found that 1.6% had the rare red hair and blue-gray eyes combo. However, the green-hazel eyes and red hair combination was lower at 0.4%, and red hair and brown eyes was the lowest prevalence at 0.3% of the study group. This shakes up the assumption that if both traits are recessive and at low prevalence, they're going to be the rarest in combination.
In his 1885 book I Say No, Wilkie Collins wrote "The prejudice against habitual silence, among the lower order of the people, is almost as inveterate as the prejudice against red hair." Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair was red.
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