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Old 03-01-2006, 07:14 PM
AKA_Monet AKA_Monet is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2000
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Quote:
Originally posted by Honeykiss1974
paging AKA_Monet, our GC genetics expert.
Eye colour determination is a factor of at least 8 genes...

Your eye colour is derived from the pigments or lack thereof inside the iris of your eye.

So one would not have a simple 1:2:1 ratio breakdown according to Mendalian genetics.

It would be more like a 1:64 chance dealing with all genes to inherit the variances made in brown versus blue eye colour.

Skin color on the other hand may be a factor of epigenesis. Changes made to DNA due to chemical modifications--such as acetylation, deacetylation, deamination, racemization, isomeration, methylation, etc. Expression of a particular color locus gives the degrees of pigment aggregation within a melanocyte--or at least that's how the hair color loci operates on the Agouti locus in mice. If it's unmethylated, the mouse is brown, if it's methylated, the mouse is black. Albinism is a result of lack of any forms of melanin--eumelanin, phaseomelanin or trimelanin (I think).

I think the child in the picture who "appears" caucasian probably has a haplotypes differing from her "twin".

It is possible for a woman to have 2 oocytes and become impregnanted from 2 different men. If one of the men was not of African descent, this it is possible that the child was a result of that...

There is also "Rickett's Syndrome" that can shift the genes toward a lighter skin tone as well as finer hair. If those genes are passed, then that is another way.

Moreover, partial albinism may be the cause for that and many persons of African descent carry genes that can differentiate into those factors.

Either way, I find the information rather sketchy and may be a hoax.

I would have to see the hardcore sequencing data. And I would want to see a basic hap-map as well as any polymorphisms at certain genes.
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