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Can two brown eyed parents have a blue eyed child?

Yes. The short answer is that brown-eyed parents can have kids with brown, blue or virtually any other color eyes. Eye color is very complicated and involves many genes.

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Editor’s Note (4/14/2021): The following article and diagrams present an over-simplified, outdated version of eye color genetics. Eye color is influenced by at least 50 genes, not all of which are well understood. Yes. The short answer is that brown-eyed parents can have kids with brown, blue or virtually any other color eyes. Eye color is very complicated and involves many genes. To begin to understand how parents with brown eyes could have blue-eyed children, let's imagine that eye color is due to a single gene, EYCL3, which comes in two versions or alleles, brown (B) and blue (b). Remember that for most genes (including eye color), you have two copies of each gene, and that you inherited one from your mother and one from your father. The brown version of the eye color gene (B) is dominant over the blue version (b). Dominant means that if either of your genes is the B version, then you will have brown eyes. Genetically speaking, then, people with brown eyes could be either BB or Bb while people with blue eyes could only be bb.

Example of a one-gene model for eye color.

For two parents with brown eyes to have a blue-eyed child, both parents must genetically be Bb. When this happens, there is a 1 in 4 chance that these parents will have a bb child with blue eyes. Unfortunately, eye color is not as simple as this. Besides the EYCL3 gene described above, at least two other genes, EYCL1 and EYCL2, are also involved. Although this set of genes explains how people can have green eyes, it does a poor job of explaining how blue-eyed parents could have brown-eyed children or how anyone can have hazel or gray eyes at all. To understand green eyes in all of this, we only need to review EYCL1 and EYCL3 (EYCL2 is a poorly understood brown eye color gene). Remember, EYCL3 has two versions, brown (B) and blue (b). EYCL1 also comes in two versions, green (G) and blue (b). The way these genes work is that if you have a B allele, you will have brown eyes (B is dominant over b and G), if you have a G allele and no B allele, you will have green eyes (G is dominant over b) and if you have all b genes, then you will have blue eyes.

Example of a two-gene model for eye color.

I hope this helps to answer your question. As you can tell, while some progress has been made, eye color is a very complex, polygenic trait that is not yet fully understood.

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What race did blue eyes come from?

Scientists concluded that every blue-eyed person on the world today can trace their ancestry back to a single European who probably lived about 10,000 years ago in the Black Sea region and who first developed a specific mutation that accounts for the now widespread iris coloration.

Humans have many phenotypic variations in eye color which is determined by multiple genes. So far, up to 16 genes have been associated with eye color inheritance. However, scientists from the Institute of Forensic Genetics at the University of Copenhagen discovered that the reason for blue eyes mainly lies in two genes: OCA2 and HERC2. This way they have shown that the earlier belief that blue eye color is a simple recessive trait is incorrect. Originally, all humans had brown eyes, although genetic variation relating to a gene called OCA2 resulted in changes to the amount of pigment produced by different individuals, resulting in the emergence of different shades of brown eyes. Scientists studying the genetics of eye color have identified that a mutation to a separate, nearby gene called HERC2 is the cause of blue eyes. This alteration switches off OCA2, the gene that determines the amount of the brown pigment melanin that we make. Today, around 20-40% of European people have blue eyes. Scientist discovered that more than 99.9 per cent of blue-eyed people who volunteered to have their DNA analyzed have the same tiny mutation in the gene that determines the color of the iris. Scientists concluded that every blue-eyed person on the world today can trace their ancestry back to a single European who probably lived about 10,000 years ago in the Black Sea region and who first developed a specific mutation that accounts for the now widespread iris coloration. Watch the video “Why Do You Have Blue Eyes?” which explains in a simple way the genetics of blue eyes. Enjoy!

By Katarina Kovac, PhD, BioSistemika LLC

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