Many people wonder if blacks can have blue eyes, but this is a rare trait. According to some scientists, the mutation that brought about blue eye color only appeared around 10,000 years ago.
Professor Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen believes that it is caused by a gene called OCA2 that codes for the production of melanin. When this gene is altered, it turns off the mechanism that produces brown melanin in the iris, resulting in blue eyes.
Genetics
In genetics, traits like hair color, height and eye color are passed from parents to children through the genes that make up their chromosomes. Chromosomes come in pairs, each containing 23 genes from one biological parent and 23 from the other biological parent for a total of 46.
Your eyes are made of a pigment called melanin that provides color and protects your eyes from light. The concentration of melanin varies depending on several factors, including genetics and environmental influences. When too much melanin is produced, it produces brown eyes; when there is too little, it produces blue eyes.
If you’ve ever seen a movie with blue eyes, you may have wondered how they got their coloring. In the past, scientists thought that only one gene determined eye color. But now, researchers have discovered that many people with blue eyes inherited their color from a single mutation.
The team conducted a study that recruited 800 blue-eyed people from around the world. They then analyzed the sequence of DNA in all the participants’ genomes.
In their paper, published in the January issue of Human Genetics, the researchers found that all of these individuals inherited the same genetic mutation that made their eyes blue. This mutation was a change in the OCA2 gene, formerly known as the P gene.
This gene controls the production of melanin, which gives skin, hair and eyes their color. The mutation changed the amount of melanin produced by the OCA2 gene, turning off the production of brown eye color and allowing blue eyes to shine through.
According to the team’s results, this mutation probably occurred around 10,000 years ago in Europe. That means that if you have blue eyes today, you’re related to a European that lived about that time, and that you can trace your ancestry back to them.
As a result, you’re far more likely to have blue eyes if you have parents with European ancestry on both sides. But even if you have a single blue-eyed parent, your child’s eyes can still be brown or hazel.
Health Conditions
Eye color can be a key indicator of your health, as your eye color may predispose you to certain medical conditions. It’s also an indication of how your eyes react to light, and can help determine your sensitivity to pain.
People with blue eyes are more likely to experience vision loss due to glaucoma than those with brown or green eyes, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. This may be because blue eyes have a lower concentration of melanin, the pigment that gives skin and hair its color.
A study published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control in 2021 found that people with blue eyes are up to 24 percent more likely to develop a type of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma than people with dark eye color. In contrast, people with hazel or green eyes were up to 17 percent more likely to get a form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma.
This is because people with blue or green eyes have less melanin in their skin, which raises the risk of developing these types of tumors, explains Davinder Grover, M.D., an ophthalmologist in Dallas.
In addition, people with blue eyes are more likely to have age-related macular degeneration, a condition that can affect your central vision. This condition usually occurs in older adults, and people with blue eyes are more likely to have it than those with brown or green eyes, according the National Institutes of Health.
People with blue eyes are also more likely to have a condition called alkaptonuria, which causes the ear cartilage to turn grey or black. In some cases, people with alkaptonuria also develop discoloured sweat that can stain clothes, and their nails may turn bluish or brownish.
It’s not known whether or not there is a link between blue eyes and sickle cell disease. However, African Americans are more likely to have a high risk of AMD than Caucasians, so it could be a factor, says Sherrie Bishop, MD, an ophthalmologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore.
The exact cause of glaucoma is not fully understood, but there are other factors that can increase the risk, including having thinner corneas. This is why it’s important to have a comprehensive dilated eye exam, which can catch these conditions early.
Ocular Albinism
People with ocular albinism have abnormalities in the optic nerves, which carry visual information from the eye to the brain. This causes problems with sharpness of vision (visual acuity), which can make it difficult to do many things. It also can cause trouble combining the images from two eyes to see depth.
Ocular albinism is usually inherited from parents. It is a genetic condition that is more common in men than in women. It is a genetic disorder that affects the production of melanin, or the brown pigment found in the skin and hair.
In people with ocular albinism, the gene that codes for melanin is not working properly, which results in an insufficient amount of melanin in the iris of the eye. This produces blue eyes, which can appear translucent or reddish in certain lights.
There are several different types of ocular albinism, depending on how the genes work and which specific parts of the brain are affected. The most common type, called ocular albinism type 1 or Nettleship-Falls ocular albinism, is inherited from both parents. It is estimated that about 1 in 60,000 males have ocular albinism type 1.
OCA is an X-linked recessive trait and is caused by mutations in the OA1 gene (GPR143). The resulting deficiency of melanin causes the eye to have poor vision, as well as other symptoms such as rapid and involuntary movements of the eyes (nystagmus), strabismus, and increased sensitivity to light.
These symptoms can be very difficult to live with and may lead to depression and other mental health issues. Talking to a mental health professional can help you learn healthy ways to cope with your ocular albinism.
Another important concern with ocular albinism is the risk of sun damage and skin cancer. This is because the lack of melanin in the skin can make it more likely to develop melanoma, which often appears as pink or red growths and moles.
People with ocular albinism are encouraged to wear hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen when outside to protect their eyes from the sun’s rays. They should also have a regular skin check with their doctor to catch any new moles or other changes in their skin color.
Partner Selection
In a recent study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers found that men with blue eyes tend to prefer women who also have light colored eyes. This is a phenomenon known as partner selection and it helps explain why eye color diversity in Europeans is much lower than it is elsewhere around the world.
There are several different theories about why people have blue eyes, but the most likely is that they arose as a result of an evolutionary change in the way the human eye works. A gene that makes the iris lighter, OCA (ocular pigmentary anosmia), may have mutated just once in ancient Europe, and that mutation has been passed down through generations to today’s blue-eyed individuals.
Another possible reason is that in ancestral Europe, people were more choosy when it came to their partners than in other parts of the world. This may have helped increase the chance of having a child with blue eyes.
The findings are important because they show how genetics can influence mate choice. They are also useful in forensics, as police could use this information to determine whether a person’s eyes and skin are the same color, without using fingerprints or other physical evidence.
In order to investigate this, we surveyed 1233 Italian women in an online experiment. We showed them a series of pairs of identical male faces with either light or dark eyes, and asked them to rate them for attractiveness in two potential relationship contexts: a short-term sexual encounter or a long-term commitment.
We found that the preference for light-eyed virtual partners was influenced by both own and paternal eye colour, but only when participants were rated as having a preference for long-term relationships. This was modulated by how much they had felt rejected by their father when they were children.
On the basis of these results, we suggest that women may have learned to value their parents’ eye colour as a cue that allows them to recognise their own kin. It is unclear how this might have affected the likelihood of giving birth to a child with blue eyes, but it is certainly an interesting hypothesis.