“Can two parents with blue eyes have a child with brown eyes?” Yes, blue-eyed parents can definitely have a child with brown eyes.
If both parents have blue eyes, the children will have blue eyes. The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive.
Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.
Both parents have to pass along the blue eye gene in order for their child to have blue eyes. That doesn't necessarily mean that the parents themselves have to have blue eyes; it's possible they carry the gene, but it is recessive. However, a blue-eyed child is almost certain if both parents have blue eyes.
These are excellent questions. People are often very confused by eye color genetics because reality seems to fly in the face of the simple genetics we are taught in school. First, the answer is yes to both questions: two blue-eyed parents can produce green or brown-eyed children.
Both parents with blue eyes: 99% chance of baby with blue eyes, 1% chance of baby with green eyes, 0% chance of baby with brown eyes.
And the brown version of one of the key genes isn't always dominant over the not-brown version. More on the second point later. Because of these two things, there are definitely genetic combinations where green-eyed parents can have a brown-eyed child. In fact, they are pretty easy to come up with.
Some seemingly impossible genetics can and do happen sometimes. This means that your kids might get your grandparent's darker eyes or hair even if you have kids with someone with blonde hair and blue eyes. It just would be much less likely than blonde haired, blue eyed kids.
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes. Green eyes don't possess a lot of melanin, which creates a Rayleigh scattering effect: Light gets reflected and scattered by the eyes instead of absorbed by pigment.
One way two blue-eyed parents can have a child with brown eyes. If something like this were true, then each of John and Jane's children would have a 1 in 4 chance of brown eyes. Pretty good odds!
Genetically, you actually carry more of your mother's genes than your father's. That's because of little organelles that live within your cells, the mitochondria, which you only receive from your mother.
The inheritance of eye color is more complex than originally suspected because multiple genes are involved. While a child's eye color can often be predicted by the eye colors of his or her parents and other relatives, genetic variations sometimes produce unexpected results.
The laws of genetics state that eye color is inherited as follows: If both parents have blue eyes, the children will have blue eyes. If both parents have brown eyes, a quarter of the children will have blue eyes, and three quarters will have brown eyes.
Because boys have the sex chromosomes XY, they must inherit their Y chromosome from their father. This means they inherit all the genes on this chromosome, including things like sperm production and other exclusively male traits.
Two brown-eyed parents are likely (but not guaranteed) to have a child with brown eyes. If you notice one of the grandparents has blue eyes, the chances of having a blue-eyed baby go up a bit. If one parent has brown eyes and the other has blue eyes, odds are about even on eye color.
The percentage of DNA that you share with each grandparent is around 25%. It's true there are some pieces of DNA that are not passed on evenly from all 4 grandparents. But they overall make up a very small percentage of your total DNA. These exceptions don't affect the totals very much.
If you and your partner both have brown eyes, your baby is highly likely to have brown eyes. If one of your baby's grandparents has blue eyes, your baby's chances of having blue eyes is higher. If you have blue eyes and your partner has brown eyes, or vice-versa, your baby's odds are about even for either eye color.
Whether eyes are blue or brown, eye color is determined by genetic traits handed down to children from their parents. A parent's genetic makeup determines the amount of pigment, or melanin, in the iris of the his or her child's eye.
When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.
Did Elizabeth Taylor have violet eyes? These days, thanks to colored contact lenses, anyone can have violet-colored eyes . Taylor didn't come by her purple peepers that way; the first tinted contact lenses weren't commercially available until 1983. Taylor's eye color was the real deal.
The highest concentration of people with green eyes is found in Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe. In fact, in Ireland and Scotland, more than three-fourths of the population has blue or green eyes – 86 percent! Many factors go into having green eyes.
Genes responsible for hair color come from both parents. Although the genes passed down from a child's parents determine hair color, variations can result in a child having a different hair color than both parents.
It turns out that brown hair is dominant. That means that even if only one of your two alleles is for brown hair, your hair will be brown. The blond allele is recessive, and gets covered up. If two brunette parents have a blond child, they had to have instructions for making blond hair hidden in their DNA.
Fact: Two blue-eyed parents can have a child with brown eyes, although it's very rare. Likewise, two brown-eyed parents can have a child with blue eyes, although this is also uncommon.