Eye Color
razib | January 7, 2010In the aughts the elucidation of human pigmentation genetics was of one the major successes of 'omic' techniques. The fact that humans exhibit some continuous variation in complexion was strongly suggestive that more than one gene was at work to generate the range of the phenotype. On the other hand pedigree based studies going back to the 1960s suggested that only a modest number of large effect genetic variants were producing the variance. Today we can say with reasonable certainty that about half a dozen genes account for almost all the between population variation in pigmentation. For…
razib | July 20, 2009Genotyping of five single nucleotide polymorphisms in the OCA2 and HERC2 genes associated with blue-brown eye color in the Japanese population:
Human eye color is a polymorphic phenotype influenced by multiple genes. It has recently been reported that three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within intron 1 of the OCA2 gene (rs7495174, rs4778241, rs4778138) and two SNPs in intron 86 (rs12913832) and the 3 UTR region (rs1129038) of the HERC2 gene - located in the upstream of the OCA2 locus - have a high statistical association with human eye color. The present study is the first to…
razib | March 10, 2009At Genetic Future. As noted by Dr. MacArthur this is currently an exception to the rule when it comes to predicting traits from genes. This can come in handy when you have DNA samples from a crime scene and reconstructing the appearance of the perp.
Related: OCA2, the "blue eye gene".