's Blogs

hey friend - interesting because im a twin - i have curly hair like a corkscrew - really curley - dark / brunette no one else does eccept a cousin - my brother has straight black hair - also my neiece is blond her father my bro is dark haired her mother chinese is also black haired - latent genes i guess not a family conspiracy - btw i know some one with one orange eye and brown eye - giles

It sure is possible for parent with blue eyes and a parent with brown eyes have a green eyed child :)

Thanks Eric & Mike. (Who coincidentally are my brothers' names too. My sister, adopted, has green eyes & light hair the same as me!) I've decided to give my mother the benefit of the doubt on this subject, as I'm no geneticist.

Thanks, doc. When finishing reading, I was 99% to saying thanks for confirming that it's possible. But then I reversed myself — concluding that it was NOT possible! (Since I have 2 ex-brothers both with blue eyes.) OK, let me try to get this figured out in my case. ¶ (I screamed at my ex-mother last night via e-mail about "who's my real father?", it's been a disagreement between us for decades actually, because it makes no sense whatsoever that the monster/abuser [thankfully long-deceased] she was married to for 24 years was my father.... And she actually replied to me this afternoon, saying that yes he was, but she did admit to something else embarrassing for her.) ¶ Anyway, "theoretically"..., Mom's got brown eyes and Dad's got blue eyes; and they make 2 blue eyed kids. Therefore, since brown's dominant over green & green's dominant over blue, Mom must have brown/blue genes, and Dad's got blue/blue genes. But, hold on, the middle kid's got GREEN eyes, which means one parent's gotta have green-genes to give them to him/me! But there's no possibility of that, there are just 1 brown & 3 blues from the parents! "Yup, she's still hiding something." ¶ Am I on the right thinking-path, doc, with this? I'd failed to mention my 2 blue-eyed siblings before. Don't worry, I won't hold you to any of your words, you're just a doctor of history. But I truly appreciate your time! Thanks!!

No David, that's NOT correct. Let me begin by saying that my PhD is in American History, not Biology, but I took a genetics course many years ago in college and Aced it. Eye color is determined by two genes, one acquired from each parent. The gene for brown eyes is dominant over any other color, and the blue eyed gene is recessive to all others. Green is recessive to brown but dominant over blue. Each person has what are known as GENOTYPES and PHENOTYPES. The phenotype is the perceived color of the eye. So the blue-eyed parent has a blue phenotype and the brown-eyed parent has a brown phenotype. But GENOTYPES are represented by the TWO genes a person carries, one from each parent. We know that the genotype for a blue-eyed person is blue-blue, because the only way you can have blue eyes is to get a blue gene from each parent. We know that a brown-eyed person has at least one brown-eyed gene, but without genetic testing we don't know what the second gene is. If it is also brown, then all the children of this couple will have brown eyes, because the dominant brown the children receive from one parent will always create a brown phenotype when paired with a blue gene. Let's represent the genotype of the brown-eyed parent as BROWN-?????. If the second gene from the brown-eyed parent is blue, then there is a 50% chance their child will have blue eyes, because we know that the child can only receive a blue gene from the blue-eyed parent. But if the second gene from the brown-eyed parent is green, then there is a 50% chance the child will have green eyes, but a 0% chance that any child will be blue-eyed, as the dominant gene from the brown-eyed parent will always supersede the recessive blue. However, genes don't always line up properly on the helix, an event called "crossing over." This can account for some unusual color combinations, like Elizabeth Taylor's violet eyes. I went to school with a guy that had 1 green eye and 1 blue one, so on rare occasions strange things do happen. I hope that this explanation wasn't too convoluted.