Posted on 01/31/2008 11:03:17 PM PST by cate_wingnutx
If you've got blue eyes, shake the hand of the nearest person who shares your azure irises: He or she may be a distant cousin. Danish researchers have concluded that all blue-eyed people share a common ancestor, presumably someone who lived 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," Professor Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen said in a press release. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes." That "switch" — a simple change from "A," or adenine, to "G," or guanine, in the DNA — actually sits next to the OCA2 gene, which regulates the pigmentation of our eyes, hair and skin, and hence has only a limiting effect on it. If the mutation had completely deactivated OCA2, all blue-eyed people would be albinos. Eiberg and his team analyzed 155 individuals in a large Danish family, plus several blue-eyed people born in Turkey and Jordan. All blue-eyed subjects had the mutation, and there was very little variation on the genes neighboring it on the chromosome, indicating that the mutation first arose relatively recently.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Boy, do I have a lot of relatives.
My eyes were blue as a child, but are now green.
Uh-oh.
I’m the only person in my family with blue eyes, and I have seven uncles, five aunts, and almost thirty cousins. I’m also the only redhead. Was I adopted?
Oh great...so I am a mutant !
lol. Me too . . . cousin :-).
We’d have to rent out an awfully big place for that family reunion.
Dad said he wore the blue genes in our family.
>>I’m the only person in my family with blue eyes, and I have seven uncles, five aunts, and almost thirty cousins. I’m also the only redhead. Was I adopted?<<
What did the mailman look like?
“Scientist: All Blue-Eyed People Are Related “ - to what?
My last girlfriend had eyes like mine..... blue. I need to go throw up now.
Are you Joe Dirt?
Worst pickup line ever.
Aaack! Does this mean I’m married to a, to a, to a RELATIVE? It sounds awfully incestuous. (LOL!)
So if I marry a blue-eyed woman, I might be a redneck?
I too have hazel/green eyes.. I must be the ugly step cousin
This has to do with where the pigment is deposited as well ~ is it on the outside of the Iris, or the inside, or on both sides ~ and a couple of other considerations discovered in the recent past.
I recently had cataract surgery and when the lenses were removed they also sucked out the pigment near my iris. The result was blue eyes! The correct color is slowly flowing back ~ orange lines!
LOL, just kidding...I know that DH and I both have the Bb eye gene (BB = Brown, Bb = Brown, bb = blue) SO - Bb x Bb will equal 1 out of 4 times a offspring with bb, blue eyed baby. SOOOO glad I paid attention during the genetics portion of Bio 101!
Still get people asking me if my darling Cooper is adopted though. Stupid People.
This now concludes today’s Eye Gene Lesson, you may now go back to your regularly scheduled postings....
alas:
Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor
University of Copenhagen | January 30, 2008 | Unknown
Posted on 01/30/2008 5:10:37 PM EST by decimon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1962221/posts
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