| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/9/2008 3:49:55 PM | I did a quick search on the blue-eyes and vitamin correlation and found a site where a geneticist proposed that the light skin ported by people in northern climates is what makes them healthier:
^
One theory is that people with blue eyes also tend to have lighter skin (the same pigment that makes brown eyes also makes dark skin). In places with less sunlight, lighter skin can help the body make Vitamin D.
If she's right, then the blue eyes don't make you healthier, but you're more likely to have light skin if you have blue eyes, which makes you more likely to procreate.
The other thing that this highlights is that our skin does not absorb vitamin D from the sun, but encourages the body to create it when it's exposed to the sun. That makes more sense to me than our capturing a vitamin from the sun.
At the same site she says that she doesn't believe that all blue-eyed people originate from the same ancestor :
The first humans probably had brown eyes. To end up with blue eyes, at least two genes need to be changed. Not everyone with blue eyes has the same set of changes, though. This suggests that blue-eyed people do not all share one common blue-eyed ancestor.
However, she is simply theorizing. Doesn't mean that she's right. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/11/2008 6:23:17 PM | I'm confused, novascotialass...
you're more likely to have light skin if you have blue eyes, which makes you more likely to procreate.
Why would that make one more likely to procreate?
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/11/2008 6:33:28 PM | It's the light skin that makes us healthier in northern climates (which is where most people started who have light skin and blue eyes) because it reacts well to the sun and makes our bodies create the vitamins we need. A darker skinned person in the same climate would not be as healthy because they would not have been induced by the sun to create vitamins and therefore in ancient times darker skinned people in northern climates would not have been as attractive as a mate or could have fallen ill and consequently not been able to reproduce. It's the survival of the fittest theory.
Nothing like a runon sentence to make a point but hopefully that clarifies it for you | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/13/2008 7:13:22 PM | | you got it right, except for the Mutation" part. we didnt mutate. the gods came down in chariets of fire and bred with the existing humans... aka alianhuman forms in space ships. its true, read some greek myth | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/13/2008 10:36:33 PM |
you got it right, except for the Mutation" part. we didnt mutate. the gods came down in chariets of fire and bred with the existing humans... aka alianhuman forms in space ships. its true, read some greek myth
LOL! Joking right?
Please?  | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/16/2008 10:26:21 AM | | mmm - I'm worried if it's true that green-eyed people are ignored. Generally, faeries have green eyes so I think it's probably because we're invisible to mortal beings. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/17/2008 10:49:14 AM | | I'm sorry, but with my current understanding of anthropology and genetics, isn't everyone related to one another? I mean for example anthropologists have shown that we all have a gene that relates to our first black female ancestor, some call this eve... Blonde haired blue eyed people, known as vedic aryans, are direct descendants of indo-aryans that settled in countries such as Iran, hence the origins of its name. Iran, Indo-aRyAN... it's also for this reason why the white race is named after a set of mountains in the middle east. Caucasus mountains, cauc-asian... | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/17/2008 11:43:11 PM | Actually to my understanding that's close, but not quite. Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in actual fact the gene for colourblindness ALWAYS comes from the mother. It's one of those things that only travels via the X chromosome from the mother. Haemophilia is the same. What happens is that the "failed" allele is exposed by the lack of a corresponding pattern on the other X (because it's a Y not an X). In a woman the second X would just wipe out the broken bit and it would all be fine, but in men it goes pear shaped. Women can only get haemophilia and colourblindness when they have (as you said) both parents having it.
That's actually pretty rare, and in most cases when women are colourblind it's actually a different type. Most colourblindness (or deficiency) is Red-Green. Women who have colour vision problems are more often Blue-Yellow, a rarer type.
I'm colourblind myself. Well... colour deficient.
Three things on this article -
First... it's cool.
Second... does it work? I mean, using our BB Bb bb thing again, you have to get two people with Bb (or bb) to get blue eyes, right? So say this ancestral bluey had bb (unlikely in a mutation) how does he pass it on? Oh... wait... I just realized. None of his children would have been blue eyed. But eventually he would have "infected" the population to the degree that his decendants at some point would have bred, and out popped a bluey. Interesting!
Third... I fail to see how blue eyes is enough of a survival trait to make it spread that extensively in the population. It seems more likely to me that he was someone who bred prolifically. I say he, because it's unlikely that a woman could spread that much genetic material, if you know what I mean.
Studies have shown that a suprising number of Chinese men (1/5?) are in fact related to Ghengis Khan. He had many sons who were themselves very prolific. And so on.
While we're talking about mongols, genetics, and eyes, can anyone tell me the genetic advantage of the epicanthal fold in Asian countries that makes them a dominant racial trait?! I never did understand that. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 3/18/2008 3:58:23 AM | Re
Third... I fail to see how blue eyes is enough of a survival trait to make it spread that extensively in the population. It seems more likely to me that he was someone who bred prolifically. I say he, because it's unlikely that a woman could spread that much genetic material, if you know what I mean.
Agreed...but the fact that blue eyes are linked to having pale skin, which allows people to create the vitamin D they need to stay healthy, would explain why someone with blue eyes in a northern climate (where there is little light) would be more sexually promiscuous. If they were healthier than the others around them they would be more attractive to the gals, I'd say. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/7/2008 2:17:40 AM | I def believe it came from more then one person out of adaptation, to continue to be that strong of a gene to reach that many people. Because the way the genetic code is in eyes, if BB (Brown) mixes with bb (blue) the result is Bb = (brown with blue traits), but if another Bb came into the picture the result can be either bb or BB, if that Bb matted with another Bb. But if one person had bb in the world and mated with BB the gentic mutation wouldn't last long, because their offspring would have Bb, and since everyone else at the time had BB, the Bb's offspring would go right back to BB (Bb + BB = BB). So someone else at the time had to atleast carry either bb or Bb to keep the blue eye gene other then just one person in the world with bb.
So the way i see it, there were more blue eyed genes around at that time but this blue eye gene ended up being the main blue eyed gene that we see today or maybe there are still more diff versions of the blue eye gene out there that science haven't traced yet. I mean they didn't test 100's of thousands of people with blue eyes, they assumed everyone with blue eyes were related based on the test they did with the people that had blue eyes. With science nothing is ever case closed. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/8/2008 12:39:17 PM | That isn't quite how genetic material is passed on.
Because the way the genetic code is in eyes, if BB (Brown) mixes with bb (blue) the result is Bb = (brown with blue traits), but if another Bb came into the picture the result can be either bb or BB, if that Bb matted with another Bb. But if one person had bb in the world and mated with BB the gentic mutation wouldn't last long, because their offspring would have Bb, and since everyone else at the time had BB, the Bb's offspring would go right back to BB (Bb + BB = BB)
Genotype - our genes, dna (half from mom, half from dad)
Phenotype - Our observable self -eye colour, hair colour, height etc. Our phenotype is the observable expression of our genes (and the environment to a certain extent)
We don't pass on our phenotype, we an only pass on our genotype (half of it).
So, if the only blue eyed (phenotype) male bb (2 recessive blue genes - his genotype) mated with a brown eyed (phenotype) female BB (2 dominant brown genes - her genotype) -
all their offspring would be brown eyed (phenotypes) but would carry both the brown and the blue genes. Bb (1 dom brown gene, 1 recess blue gene - genotype)
If all these brown eyed Bb folk mate with brown eyed BB partners - approx half of their offspring will be BB, the other half will be Bb, but all will have brown eyes.
The blue gene will continue to be passed on in the genotype without ever being seen in the phenotype until a Bb female mates with a Bb male (descended from the original bb male) - if they both pass on the b gene - then this child will be bb genotype and blue eyed -phenotype. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/8/2008 4:48:19 PM | We don't pass on our phenotype
That's incorrect a persons phenotype of each sex passes on 50% of his or her abnormal gene on to offspring. The last 50% is passed on through the genotype. So my statement above stands correct.
Wikipedia.
So there for the blue eye gene can't thrive without interactionwith another blue eyed gene and they only way the blue eyed gene can thrive is if there is continues interacting with another Bb or bb. A continues interaction with BB will result in BB for future generations with no b gene. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/8/2008 5:27:48 PM | We don't pass on phenotype; we pass our genes (or as you point out 50% of our genes) to our offspring and the phenotype is the physical manifestation of our genetic makeup
The rest of your statement is correct, though. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/8/2008 6:31:06 PM | Even so, the phenome (sum of the phenotypes) isn`t passed on. Using the eye colour example, two parents can have brown eyes and have a child with blue eyes. The genes are passed to the kids but the combination makes a different phenotype (or phenome if you will)
I do appreciate your point, ,though, that it`s more likely that there was more than one person with a mutated eye colour gene than one individual with two mutated eye colour genes | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/8/2008 8:55:02 PM | I am having trouble with your statement, it doesn't make sense to me. Please could you post the Wikipedia page so that I can read it in full context?
That's incorrect a persons phenotype of each sex passes on 50% of his or her abnormal gene on to offspring. The last 50% is passed on through the genotype. So my statement above stands correct.
A phenotype is the physical, observable organism. This includes blood type, skin colour, height, personality characteristics etc. It is the sum of the atoms, molecules, cells, energy proteins etc. Our phenotype per se, cannot be passed on because it is our hair, our height, our eyes etc. These things don't fit into a sperm or an egg......
A genotype is the blueprint - the internally coded, inheritable information present in almost every cell. This is the genetic code (46 chromosomes - 23 from mom, 23 from dad) - the instructions used by the cells to produce the physical, observable organism - the phenotype - your body, your heart, your laugh, and your eye colour. We only pass on half of our genotype to our offspring.
All human cells contain 46 chromosomes (23 pairs) except the sperm and egg - which have only 23 chromosomes. These 23 are randomly selected from the 46 - so - a mutated gene may or may not be passed on. If it is passed on in the sperm(egg), whether the mutated gene is expressed in the phenotype depends on which chromosomes have been passed on in the egg (sperm).
The explanation I posted about how the blue eye gene can be passed on without expression, yet show up in later generations is not guesswork or just my opinion. It is a process with wide scientific acceptance. Much as I would love to lay claim, Gregor Mendel (1866) discovered the rules of genetic inheritance. He discovered how traits are inherited, why traits appear to skip generations and that traits are passed on to the next generation in the same form they were received from the parent generation - not diluted, not blended, regardless of how the trait was expressed in the genotype.
Darwin discovered natural selection, but he knew he could not adequately explain how inheritance worked. He thought that offspring were an average of parental traits (blending inheritance). However, it didn't explain why some traits were preserved through generations of reproduction, nor the existence of wide genetic variation. If the offspring was a blended average of the parents, then traits should get weaker.
Mendel's work could have answered Darwin's questions. However, although Darwin had a copy of Mendel's book, he never even opened it (the pages remain uncut). Modern evolutionary synthesis is the combination of various scientific theories, into a cohesive theory of evolution. It includes Darwin’s natural selection and Mendel’s genetic inheritance.
This website shows how the genotype and phenotype of eye colour work together.
http://www.athro.com/evo/gen/eyecols.html | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/9/2008 8:35:54 AM | A phenome is the set of all phenotypes expressed by a cell, tissue, organ, organism, or species. A phenome includes phenotypic traits due to either genetic or environmental influences.
A phenotype is any observed quality of an organism, such as its morphology, development, or behavior,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenome
So therefor the phenome has to get genetically passed on as part as the development lifecycle process, without it there would be no recreation. That's what i'm referring to.
The explanation I posted about how the blue eye gene can be passed on without expression, yet show up in later generations is not guesswork or just my opinion. It is a process with wide scientific acceptance.
The only way it can show up in later generations is if there is an ongoing interaction with other mutations that have the bb or Bb gene. Many scienctist agree and have proved this to be the correct case, because if it could be passed on without expression then a lot of other people form diff darker ethnic backgrounds would have blue eyes because it would just show up at random, thus it would be common for all races to have the blue eyed gene but it's not, because it orignated from an adatptive feature like brown eyes did. Blue eyes is recessive and cannot overtake another gene that's dominate like Brown without having a recessive part to it and that only comes from Bb and not BB. The only way the blue eyed gene can be passed on is if it interacts with another blue eye gene, that's a fact either Bb or bb. If Bb interacts with BB the result of the interaction is BB brown with no traits of blue , because two parts brown is dominate over any one part blue. If bb interacts with BB the result of the interaction is Bb, one part brown with one part blue traits. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/9/2008 12:57:12 PM | This is like saying: are all hunchbacks related, do they all belong to the same circus?
Silly.
Not that I am opposed to seemingly silly questions, but this is far out. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/9/2008 2:51:11 PM | In my mind there are two possibilities:
1. One original individual had two mutated brown-eyed genes (i.e., the blue-eyed gene) and procreated often enough that the blue-eyed gene spread throughout the population. The original offspring would have been brown-eyed, but the second generation and further on would have produced blue-eyed kids as individuals with one blue-eyed gene met and mated.
2. More than one individual had one mutated gene each, passing the blue-eyed gene to future generations...The result is the same as in scenario 1, except that you would not be able to make the claim that all blue-eyed individuals are related to one ancestor.
I think number 2 is more plausible, because the chance of an eye-colour gene mutating is probably very slim; the chance of it occurring twice in the same individual is probably astronomically low. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/9/2008 9:44:24 PM | Steelcity1981 stated: If both parents have B/B then their offspring will have B/B = Brown eyes.
Then why did this happen? I have brown eyes and my kids mother has brown eyes;
My oldest has blue eyes, My middle one has brown eyes, and my youngest has green eyes!
So does that mean there mom slept with three different people?
Maybe I should check my kids DNA to see if I am their father | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/10/2008 1:19:55 AM | | that means that both of you have the B/b gene instead of the B/B gene. If both of you had the B/B gene then all of your kids would have B/B which is brown eyes, but cosidering both you and the mother of your kids have B/b then your kids will either have bb, BB it becomes a random thing then. The b family consist of blue, green gray and hazel which are recessive . Only the B consist of brown only which is dominate. | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/10/2008 3:03:47 AM | Because you and your kids' mother have B/b (brown/blue). Since the brown is the dominant gene, that's your eye colour
I think I would stick with that explanation rather than the other :o) | |
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| Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related
Posted: 4/10/2008 5:04:38 AM | I want whatever you are smoking Steelcity :)
he only way it can show up in later generations is if there is an ongoing interaction with other mutations that have the bb or Bb gene. Many scienctist agree and have proved this to be the correct case, because if it could be passed on without expression then a lot of other people form diff darker ethnic backgrounds would have blue eyes because it would just show up at random
I have brown eyes and my kids mother has brown eyes;
My oldest has blue eyes, My middle one has brown eyes, and my youngest has green eyes! So does that mean there mom slept with three different people?
Maybe I should check my kids DNA to see if I am their father
both of you have the B/b gene instead of the B/B gene. If both of you had the B/B gene then all of your kids would have B/B which is brown eyes, but cosidering both you and the mother of your kids have B/b then your kids will either have bb, BB it becomes a random thing then. - the blue and green kids have bb, middle kid could be BB or Bb. Pretty good explanation of how the blue gene is passed on without expression :) | |
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