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All Blue-Eyed People Share One Common Ancestor

by viralbandit December 23, 2020, 8:33 pm 1.9k Views

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Image: Inventory Shots from Serg Zastavkin/Shutterstock

A team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen has determined that all blue-eyed individuals share 1 typical ancestor from 6,000–10,000 a long time in the past. “Originally, we all experienced brown eyes,” clarifies professor Hans Eiberg from the Office of Mobile and Molecular Drugs. “But a genetic mutation influencing the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the generation of a ‘switch,’ which virtually ‘turned off’ the potential to deliver brown eyes.” Whilst this ‘switch’ does not shut down the gene fully in blue-eyed people (as it does in folks with albinism), it does restrict the generation of melanin in the iris until eventually brown eyes become blue.

Professor Eiberg and his workforce reached this summary following comparing the total of melanin present in brown and environmentally friendly eyes with that in blue eyes. They uncovered that the latter consists of only a modest amount of money of variation of melanin. “From this, we can conclude that all blue-eyed persons are joined to the identical ancestor,” Eiberg carries on. “They have all inherited the identical switch at just the exact spot in their DNA.” This examine commenced in 1996 and was carried out throughout a substantial amount of blue-eyed persons in Europe as nicely as in the Middle East, like Turkey and Jordan.

In the end, this mutation won’t show up to have an effect on something other than the color of one’s eyes. You can read through far more about this investigation on Science Day-to-day.