Why Is Blonde Hair A Recessive Trait

Thus a person with a brown allele will have brown hair.

Why is blonde hair a recessive trait. Some genes that reduce melanin overall cause people to have blond hair and blue eyes. In 2002 bbc news reported that unnamed german experts had concluded that the natural distribution of blond hair would cease within the span of 200 years owing to the genes associated with blond hair being recessive the article reported the scientists had said that there is a reportedly low number of people carrying the recessive blond allele especially in nations of mixed. One phenotype brown blonde has a dominant brown allele and a recessive blond allele.

Of course blond hair could also have provided no evolutionary advantage and simply persisted by random chance he said. Naturally most genetic differences between populations are not as superficial as eye and hair color and i m not aware that there are more recessive european specific alleles than you d expect by chance. Gregor mendel did much of his work with peas.

The genetics of blond hair by elizabeth pennisi jun. Well blond hair and blue eyes are caused by the absence of a pigment so it s not at all surprising that allele coding for the presence of one is dominant. In the course of his research he learned that purple was a dominant trait for flower color meaning that a flower only had to inherit one purple gene to produce purple flowers.

It may have been a celebrated trait because it was rare kingsley said. In northern regions of europe evolution seems to have favored blond hair and bl. Although hair color is dependant on dominant and recessive qualities predicting hair color is more complex than predicting other genetic traits.

Which in a lot of ways is a good thing because multi gene traits allow for all of the wonderful variation we see around us. A person with no brown alleles will be blond. This explains why two brown haired parents can produce a blond haired child.

Blonde hair color is recessive but it can be passed on in the absence of a dominant trait. We use the term heterozygous to describe the normal. G the term recessive was used by mendel to describe a physical trait that required a hereditary unit of each of two parents to appear although the two parents themselves did not show that trait.