DailyDirt: Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Mar 9th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Eye color isn't a simple single gene trait. In a rare 1% of the population, some people have two different colored eyes or eyes with multiple colors (aka heterochromia iridum). Most people have brown eyes, but it's easy to change your eye color with contact lenses to any color you want -- even scary unnatural monster eyes. Eye color doesn't seem to have much meaning -- as long as you don't teach kids otherwise -- but genetic studies will probably find some interesting correlations in the future.

DNA analysis of ancient humans can determine eye color from 24 locations on the human genome. As long as enough DNA remains to be analyzed, researchers can determine hair and eye color for specimens that are hundreds of years old. [url]
About 17% of the world's population has blue eyes, and if you don't like contact lenses to change your eye color -- you can turn your brown eyes blue with lasers. There's actually no blue pigmentation for blue eyes, so a laser ablation technique can remove brown pigments and change a person's eye color permanently. [url]
All blue-eyed people have a single, common ancestor who lived about 6,000-10,000 years ago. Originally, everyone had brown eyes. [url]

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Filed Under: biology, dna, evolution, eye color, farsightedness, genetics, heterochromia iridum, mutations, myopia, nearsightedness, vision

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 9 Mar 2016 @ 6:00pm

Melanesians and Aboriginals
There are a few of both groups that have blonde hair and blue eyes along with dark skin. Neither has the same mutation that gives the rest of the world blue eyes.
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blogagog (profile), 9 Mar 2016 @ 6:23pm

Things that make your brown eyes blue are much better than things that make your blue eyes brown.
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jim, 10 Mar 2016 @ 6:03am

Re: oh, really easy
One group, surviving a gene mutation, about 6/10 years ago. Sounds familiar, like the event that killed off the majority of the world population, then. Thee blue eye, lighter skin sound like an adaption trait that survived for some reason. Lower light level, different survival tatics needed. What driver for the adaption?
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 10 Mar 2016 @ 6:56am

But what about green and hazel eyes?
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klaus (profile), 10 Mar 2016 @ 7:04am

Awesome
How freakishly awesome it must have been to be the only person on the planet with blue eyes.

And yes, that person got laid...
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Gene Cavanaugh, 10 Mar 2016 @ 9:48am

Brown eyes blue
I have cataracts in my eyes (well, actually an artificial lens in one eye, and a cataract in the other).

I likely wouldn't have them if my eyes had any protective pigmentation - ie, if my eyes weren't blue.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2016 @ 10:25am

Thanks for the read!
As someone with central heterochromia iridum (and heterochromia of the hair, although that's more subtle), I appreciated the additional information. Whenever someone asks me what colour my eyes are, I just ask them to make a best guess. Upside is that I can change my perceived eye colour by changing my shirt :D
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Rekrul, 10 Mar 2016 @ 1:31pm

I have dark blonde/light brown hair and green eyes. My facial hair is black though.
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TRX (profile), 10 Mar 2016 @ 1:43pm

> common ancestor

As we were taught not that long ago, blue eyes occured spontaneously among various disparate groups as a result of one of the eye color genes being prone to damage.
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