Posted: 04/21/06 - 00:00 Post subject: genetics & eye color
My husband and I both have dark brown eyes but our baby has blue eyes. I think that it is genetically impossible. How come, two dark colored parents can have blue eyed baby? What does genetic says about eye color?
I know that at birth, babies are usually born with blue colored eyes, regardless of the eye colors of their parents. At this early stage in life, babies have not started to make a dark brown pigment called melanin in the irises of their eyes, but as they get older, their eye color may change when they start producing melanin in their irises. Melanin is also produced by the skin when it’s exposed to UV rays to protect against their harmful effects. This pigment also causes a suntan to develop by darkening skin color. Eye color is a physical trait that is determined by the pairing of genes from both parents and it used to be thought that a single gene pair following dominant and recessive inheritance patterns was responsible for this trait. Now it is known to be much more complex and geneticists have focused on two of the three gene pairs to help clarify the inheritance of eye color. I am not sure how but I know that it is possible for two brown-eyed parents to have a child with a different eye color than theirs.
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