What Color Hair Will My Baby Have? A Genetics Guide
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These genes have been passed down through generations in your family. You inherit half of your genetic makeup from each parent, which includes the genes responsible for your hair color. If both parents carry this gene, their child might have red hair. Hair color is not determined by several that interact with each other and the environment. This interaction can create different types of color hair, ranging from black to blonde and from brown to red.
Additional red hair colour-associated loci
However, given the lower prevalence of these hair colors, these correlations are subject to larger standard errors. The spousal correlations suggest weak assortative mating with respect to hair colors (except black hair where the correlation is −0.179 and red hair where the correlation is 0.528). We note that the spousal correlations may be due to direct phenotypic assortment for hair color, or may be related to the geographic population structure of the Netherlands, as was established previously in our data [28]. A baby born with dark hair may change to having light brown or blonde hair during the first six months.[4] Even then, babies and toddlers with blonde or red hair often develop brown hair as they age.
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As you might imagine, lots of different genes can impact how these cells work. In fact, dozens of genes involved in everything from building your hair’s roots to repairing DNA have been found to affect hair color. Let’s pretend that there’s just one gene that controls hair color, with a ‘brown’ and a ‘blond’ allele. The type and amount of melanin and how it is distributed in cells is what creates differences in hair, skin and eye colour. Blond hair is formed when there is a presence of lower quantity of brown eumelanin with the absence of other pigments.
What determines the Amount of Melanin Pigments in our Hair?
Mostly, colored hair turns white or gray as the melanocyte activity stops. This means that a person needs to inherit the blonde hair gene from both parents to have blonde hair. Whether you’re exploring hair color genetics chart or different colors of hair, the science behind the color of hair is both fascinating and intricate. It might not always match either parent’s color and can change over time, particularly in childhood when melanin production might vary.
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Since you have two copies of each gene, that means the only way to have a recessive feature like blond hair is for both of them to be the recessive allele. Having one of each will leave your hair brown, even though you’ll secretly be carrying the blond allele in every cell of your body. That means that even if only one of your two alleles is for brown hair, your hair will be brown.
How Reliable Are Baby Hair Color Predictors?
The science of our color can be explained by a little bit of physics and a lot of biology and chemistry. While the absorption and reflection of light also determine the hair color, the primary factor to determine our basic hair color is by our Genes. As mentioned above, the type and amount of melanin pigments in our hair gives a color. The total amount of melanin and the ratio between eumelanin and pheomelanin is unique to us and entirely determined by our genes. However, it is not just a single or a couple of them, interestingly, several genes are involved in melanin production, and that can, therefore, affect our hair color. These genes switch on and off at different points in our lives – hence the reason our hair changes color as we get older.
To find out more about the influence of genetics on hair color:
This can only happen if the brunette parent carries the blonde allele. If he carries only brown alleles, he can only pass on brown alleles, and they’ll dominate causing his child to have brown hair. While trying to predict your baby's hair color can be quite exciting, the true beauty lies in the surprise. Regardless of whether your child inherits your dark locks or your partner's fiery mane, their unique characteristics will make them all the more special. So, enjoy the guessing game with the Baby Hair Color Calculator, but prepare to be delighted by the unexpected when your little one arrives with their own perfect shade of hair. The genes that affect hair colour also affect other cancer types, while other pigment genes affect the chances of having Crohn's and other forms of bowel disease.
For the most part the idea of a single brown/blond gene matches how hair colors are really passed down. If you add in a second gene with a recessive allele that makes red hair you’ve got a decent model of most hair colors and a nice story to go with it. In both cohorts, there is a higher prevalence of blond, red and light brown hair colors among women and a higher prevalence of black and dark brown hair colors among men. In contrast, there are many genes across our genome involved eumelanin variation, including less damaging genetic variants in the same MC1R gene.
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The phased data were then imputed with MINIMAC [21] in batches of around 500 individuals for 561 chromosome chunks obtained by the CHUNKCHROMOSOME program [22]. After imputation, DNA confirmed MZ twins were re-duplicated back into the data. The format of the data was transformed to the basic three probabilities SNPTEST gen.gz format, as this is the most general applicable format for the subsequent genomic analyses tools. The mean imputation quality R2 metric is 0.38 (based on all 30,051,533 imputed autosomal SNPs). Understanding how our genetic information can produce different hair colour tones can be as difficult as untangling long hair after not brushing it for several days. One of the traits that we usually use to physically describe people is their hair colour.
Hormones, certain medications, and chemicals such as hair relaxers or perms can alter the characteristics of a person’s hair. Now that you have an idea of what color hair your baby will have, you might be curious about eye color. Later in life, melanin stops being produced and hair turns grey and white. The age at which graying starts is determined by a combination of genetics and environmental factors.
However, the gene for MPB is actually passed down from both sides of the family. It may also skip generations and affect siblings (male or female) completely randomly. That means that your older brother may have the George Clooney hair while you are stuck with the Vin Diesel look, or visa versa. BUT, if most of the men on your mother’s AND your father’s side are bald, then you, your sons and brothers most certainly inherited the gene. The Tech Museum of Innovation at Stanford University provides a Q&A on the differences in hair texture among ethnic groups and another on the inheritance of hair texture. Plots show the densities for each hair color category in the UK Biobank (top) and 23andMe cohorts (bottom).
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