Iris color, just like hair and skin color, depends on a protein called melanin. We have specialized cells in our bodies called melanocytes whose job it is to go around secreting melanin. Over time, if melanocytes only secrete a little melanin, your baby will have blue eyes.
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.
If both the parents have brown eyes, then there is generally a 25% chance for their child to have blue eyes. Because both the brown-eyed parents have a recessive blue-eye gene and can pass it to the next generation. However, since eye color is polygenic, several other genes exert their effects as well.
A couple's children can have almost any eye color, even if it does not match those of either parent. Currently it is thought that eye color is determined by about six genes, so you can imagine how inheritance of eye color becomes very complicated.
If both of you have brown eyes, then there is approximately a 25% chance that your child will have blue eyes if you both carry a recessive blue-eye gene. If only one of you has a recessive blue-eye gene, and the other has two brown, dominant genes, then there is a less than 1% chance of the baby having blue eyes.
Blue will always be recessive. If both parents have a blue allele, it is likely that the child will have blue eyes. However, if one parent has green eyes and the other blue, your child will most likely have green eyes, as green is dominant over blue.
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.
Genetics of Blue Eyes
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.
All men inherit a Y chromosome from their father, which means all traits that are only found on the Y chromosome come from dad, not mom. The Supporting Evidence: Y-linked traits follow a clear paternal lineage.
But what happens if a child has blue eyes and his parents both have brown eyes? The child inherited two blue genes; although neither parent had blue eyes, it was still part of their DNA. Blue eyes can skip a generation. In other words, this child's grandparents' eyes were probably blue.
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.
Yes! Grandparents' eye color can also impact baby's eye color. Baby eye color is genetic, and genes pass from generation to generation.
Unlike nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother.
Eye color is determined by variations in a person's genes. Most of the genes associated with eye color are involved in the production, transport, or storage of a pigment called melanin. Eye color is directly related to the amount of melanin in the front layers of the iris.
Blue eyes. This is the next most common eye color, encompassing about 10% of the population. While blue eyes are more sensitive to light during the day, people with blue eyes tend to see better at night – unless there are bright lights.
Unfortunately, unless you were born with blue eyes, there aren't any ways to naturally change your eye color.
Disadvantages of Blue Eyes
Typically, people with blue eyes are likely to be more sensitive to light. With less pigment in the layers of the iris, they may be unable to block out the effects of bright fluorescent lights or sunlight. This condition of light sensitivity is called photophobia.
The second-rarest eye color is hazel, a mixture of brown and green with golden flecks. About 18% of Americans have hazel eyes, compared with about 5% of the world's population.
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.
The rarest natural hair colour is red, which makes up only one to two percent of the global population. You commonly see these hair colours in western and northern areas of Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland. However, natural redheads may not exist for much longer.
Grey eyes are one of the rarest eye colors. Less than 3% of the global population has grey eyes. They're most commonly found in people of Northern and Eastern European ancestry.
A brown eyed dad and a green eyed mom can have a blue eyed child because there are at least two eye color genes. Because of this, it is possible for both green and brown eyed parents to be carriers for blue eyes. And as carriers, they each can pass down blue eye genes to their children.
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.