CALLING THOSE WITH A SCIENTIFIC BENT, Can two blonde parents have a child who has dark hair.

[Eaney]

Anyone know the answer to this? Something has been bugging me for a while.

Well me and dp have dark hair but have a blonde haired Dd , or is that different.

I know they can, but have no idea of the science behind it!

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Think so. If memory serves me Blonde is a recessive gene so you and DH probably have two recessive genes for blonde hair.

I am trying to recall school biology so I'm probably wrong.

IF I am wright about this (and this is a capital IF.....), two dark haired can produce blonde is they are both carrying blonde genes (but dark is predominant to blonde hence they are dark). BUT for someone to be blonde they must have two blonde genes hence they cannot produce dark.
Don't quote me though,as we were mostly reffering to mice at school....

If a parent is dark then yes (I think) x & y is abotu as far asmy memory goes!

Dont know the science....as a child I was very blonde but both my parents had dark brown hair. My dh is blonde and I have Brown hair now but ds has red hair.

That's what I thought CAS...I wish I had paid more attention at school.

That should be: hence, two blonde parents cannot have dark haired baby.
As I wouldn't want to cause any paternity issues though, I could always be wrong!!

Nemo were your parents blonde as youngsters though. If they were then you have their hair colour.

I was naturally blonde as a child till 15 (now I'm unnaturally blonde) then mousy. Dh is red/blonde. Our child is very brunette but with blonde and red (natural) streaks.

i think so, because mendelian genetics are very very simple. in reality its not that simple.

there are differnt types of the same gene so with hair colour and u can be a carrier of more than one hair colour.

Blonde is either a recessive gene, which means you would need 2 blonde "bits" for blonde hair.

Or it is dominant which means that you or partner could have passed it on and its strong enough to make the hiar blonde anyway.

Hope taht makes sense lol

Hair colour is not purely "blond gene, brown gene".

Hair color happens because of a kind of pigment called melanin. There are two kinds of melanin, eumelanin and phomelanin.

Focussing only on eumelanin: If your hair has a lot of eumelanin, it will be black; a little eumelanin and your hair will be blonde.

The amount of eumelanin in your hair is determined by lots of genes. Let?s imagine (although the real case is probably more complicated) that there are two possibilities for each of these genes, either on or off. When the genes are on, they make eumelanin and when they are off, they don?t make anything.

One other thing you need to know is that eumelanin genes work in an additive way instead of in a dominant and recessive way. In other words, the more eumelanin genes that are on, the darker your hair will be.

Given these assumptions, the answer to your question is that you and your DH, as blonds, inherited few of the ?on? eumelanin genes while your child inherited a lot.

I@ve just copied it via google - you need tamum to tell you properly

Well I am dark and Dh is red and both our kids are blonde

yes! The colour of hair is determined by more than one gene, so it is not as simple to detrmine inheritance.... I am not going to bore you with details but while two blond people are more likely to have blond children, it is not impossible to have a dark haired child.

Hows this for weird

Two white parents can have a halve cast baby.

My parents were both blonde as children and in fact my mum remained blonde (naturally ) into her seventies, out of four children I was the only one to be born dark haired.

Helloooo The later posts are right- there are quite a few genes that contribute to hair colour, it's an additive effec. There's no such thing as a blonde gene, so almost any permutation is possible.

(hello beety, how's the move? )

(P.S. Soupy, I was so impressed for a moment there )

And skin colour is determined by at least 4 different genes, is that right Tamum?

I've no idea how many to be honest, but definitely several. Probably 4 or so major ones, and maybe a few more minor effect ones. I should have a PhD in hedging my bets, shouldn't I?

What are the genetics of bet hedging?

Risk taking in bets depends on the liklyhood of a win pitching up. In the dim and distant past I studied this is psychology. God the hours must have flown by........

It sounds bloody obvious but is a bit more complicated that first sight....but not interesting enough to go into an a Friday night.

Bloody hell girls, we used to have a social life once , remember????