How Does A Baby Get Blue Eyes?

How Does A Baby Get Blue Eyes
Eye color changes over time – Iris color, just like hair and skin color, depends on a protein called melanin. We have specialized cells in our bodies called melanocytes whose job it is to go around secreting melanin. Over time, if melanocytes only secrete a little melanin, your baby will have blue eyes.

If they secrete a bit more, his eyes will look green or hazel, When melanocytes get really busy, eyes look brown (the most common eye color), and in some cases they may appear very dark indeed. Because it takes about a year for melanocytes to finish their work it can be a dicey business calling eye color before the baby’s first birthday.

The color change does slow down some after the first 6 months of life, but there can be plenty of change left at that point. Eye color is a genetic property, but it’s not quite as cut-and-dried as you might have learned in biology class.

Two blue-eyed parents are very likely to have a blue-eyed child, but it won’t happen every single time. Two brown-eyed parents are likely (but not guaranteed) to have a child with brown eyes. If you notice one of the grandparents has blue eyes, the chances of having a blue-eyed baby go up a bit. If one parent has brown eyes and the other has blue eyes, odds are about even on eye color. If your child has one brown eye and one blue eye, bring it to your doctor’s attention; he probably has a rare genetic condition called Waardenburg syndrome.

How rare is 2 brown eyed people with a blue eyed baby?

Is it possible for two brown eyed people to have a child with blue eyes? Editor’s Note (4/14/2021): The following article and diagrams present an over-simplified, outdated version of eye color genetics. Eye color is influenced by at least 50 genes, not all of which are well understood.

Yes. The short answer is that brown-eyed parents can have kids with brown, blue or virtually any other color eyes. Eye color is very complicated and involves many genes. To begin to understand how parents with brown eyes could have blue-eyed children, let’s imagine that eye color is due to a single gene, EYCL3, which comes in two versions or alleles, brown ( B ) and blue ( b ).

Remember that for most genes (including eye color), you have two copies of each gene, and that you inherited one from your mother and one from your father. The brown version of the eye color gene ( B ) is dominant over the blue version ( b ). Dominant means that if either of your genes is the B version, then you will have brown eyes.

Genetically speaking, then, people with brown eyes could be either BB or Bb while people with blue eyes could only be bb,
Example of a one-gene model for eye color.
For two parents with brown eyes to have a blue-eyed child, both parents must genetically be Bb,
When this happens, there is a 1 in 4 chance that these parents will have a bb child with blue eyes.

Unfortunately, eye color is not as simple as this. Besides the EYCL3 gene described above, at least two other genes, EYCL1 and EYCL2, are also involved. Although this set of genes explains how people can have green eyes, it does a poor job of explaining how blue-eyed parents could have brown-eyed children or how anyone can have hazel or gray eyes at all.

To understand green eyes in all of this, we only need to review EYCL1 and EYCL3 (EYCL2 is a poorly understood brown eye color gene). Remember, EYCL3 has two versions, brown ( B ) and blue ( b ). EYCL1 also comes in two versions, green ( G ) and blue ( b ). The way these genes work is that if you have a B allele, you will have brown eyes ( B is dominant over b and G ), if you have a G allele and no B allele, you will have green eyes ( G is dominant over b ) and if you have all b genes, then you will have blue eyes.

Example of a two-gene model for eye color. I hope this helps to answer your question. As you can tell, while some progress has been made, eye color is a very complex, polygenic trait that is not yet fully understood. : Is it possible for two brown eyed people to have a child with blue eyes?

Can you influence your baby’s eye color?

Testing Mom and Dad’s Genetics – The Fertility Institutes have developed a unique, proprietary screening protocol studying a complex set of important family historic and personal genetic landmarks in parents known to be associated with eye color. It is important to understand that parents do not have to personally have the eye color they are seeking.

They must only carry the genetic codes for that eye color that can be passed on to their child.
Clearly, not every person who personally has green eyes has both or even one parent with green eyes.
Yet those parents, who do NOT have green eyes, clearly carried the “hidden” genes to produce green eyes in their child.

And that is what we are initially looking for in you as parents. We are searching for clues to the codes, hidden or otherwise that you may or may not carry that will allow you to produce a child with the color you seek. It must be remembered that NO ONE and NOTHING can “make” a baby with an eye color.

As has been happening from the beginning of humankind, only mom and dad can “make” the eye color by combining their own unique genetics into the new child (see chart below). The Fertility Institutes are prepared to offer this screening protocol to all those scheduling an initial intake consultation with our eye color program.

Our findings thus far have shown 72% of new eye color selection inquiry patients to be qualified per our screening protocols. Those unqualified through initial screening are still eligible to participate as there is NO protocol able to predict eye color outcomes with 100% certainty. What we are now able to do is first examine your personal and family eye color genetics history as parents to be. We will determine if you possibly carry the genes associated with the ability to produce a baby with a chosen eye color. If the necessary building blocks or codes may be present, based on the provided genetics information, we allow parents the opportunity to enter the program to produce embryos destined to be tested for general genetic health (euploidy), gender if desired and specific eye color genes.

These genetic results about each individual embryo will be presented to you, and together with your physicians, geneticist and IVF scientists, you will be offered the opportunity to specify which embryo or embryos you elect to have returned to you in the hopes of producing a healthy pregnancy.
You will also be given the opportunity to store any healthy unutilized embryos for future transfer.

We are only offering eye color selection at this time in conjunction with our general genetic well-being and gender selection procedures. Eye color preference is available only as an “add-on” procedure to our general procedures. We are not able at this time to receive embryos produced at outside fertility centers for eye color screening.

Can a baby have blue eyes if only one parent does?

How can two brown-eyed parents have blue-eyed children? Editor’s Note (1/6/2021): Some information in this article is out of date. While it describes eye color as a simple trait determined by 2 genes, scientists now know this is incorrect. Eye color is a that is influenced by many genes.

While the truth is more complicated than described below, it is still true that brown eye color is more dominant to blue, and that the DNA for blue eyes can be hidden in a family for generations.
A lot of different colors can lurk behind someone’s brown eyes.
This is true even if an eye color like blue hasn’t been seen in a family for generations.

The blue eyes could still be hiding there, waiting for the right time to appear. That right time is when both parents happen to have that particular color hiding out behind their brown. If only one parent has the right stuff to pass on blue eyes, odds are none of the kids will end up with blue eyes. Blue eyes can stay hidden in a family tree for hundreds of years The blue eyes would keep getting passed down until finally one of these “carriers of blue eyes” had children with another parent that was a carrier too. Now their children would have a chance at blue eyes.

This is almost certainly how the two of you ended up with a child with blue eyes. You and your husband both have blue and at least one of you has green eyes hiding behind your brown. By chance, you each passed a blue to one of your children and that child ended up with blue eyes. Well, that is almost how it worked Three Eye Colors, Two Genes For something seemingly so simple, eye color is surprisingly complex.

Even the simplest models of eye color that try to explain just brown, green, and blue need two genes. The first gene determines whether or not you will have brown eyes. If it says have brown, then the other gene doesn’t matter. You will have brown eyes.

If it says not to have brown eyes, then the second gene kicks in.
This gene will determine whether you will have green or blue eyes.
One way to think about it is with cards.
Imagine the first gene is a card that is always on top of the second one.
This first gene comes in two versions, brown and clear.
If you have a brown card, you can’t see the card underneath.

It could be green, it could be bluewho knows? The end result is brown eyes. If you have the clear card, then you can see what is underneath. And it will be either blue or green. Now you have blue or green eyes depending on the underneath card. Here is what I mean: As you can see, if you have the brown card (gene), you will have brown eyes no matter what is underneath. But if you have a clear card (not-brown gene), then the second card (gene) matters. This is a very simplified version of how blue eyes can stay hidden in a family tree.

Generation after generation, at least one parent passes down a brown version of the first gene. The blue stays hidden until two people with a hidden blue happen to both pass a clear and a blue to their child. Now the child has blue eyes. But how can a brown eyed person pass a “clear card?” It is because we have two copies of most of our genes.

So instead of two cards, one for each gene, we need to think about four cards, two for each gene. Two Genes, Four Copies Getting back to our card example, let’s say that instead of one of each type of card, we have two. So for the first gene you could have two browns, a brown and a clear or two clears.

And for the second you could have two green, a green and a blue, or two blues.
Again the brown and clear genes are always on top of the green and blue.
But one difference is that now we say that green is always on top of blue.
So if you have two browns, again you have a brown card on top.
And if you have a clear and a brown, then you still can only see brown.

You can only get green or blue with two clear cards. When that happens, we can take a look at the cards underneath. If there are one or two greens, you have a green pile. But if both of the first gene are clear and the second blue, then you have blue. OK, that was a lot of cards! Here are three examples: In the first, the brown trumps everything. In the second green wins out over blue and in the last, blue wins out. So in genetics-speak, brown is dominant over green and blue, and green is dominant over blue. Another way to say this is blue is recessive to green and brown, and green is recessive to brown.

Let’s use these cards now to imagine your situation. First off, you each have brown eyes so you have at least one brown. But you also had kids with green and blue eyes so we know your second card has to be the clear one. You each have one brown and one clear card. Since you had a green and a blue eyed child, we know you must each have a blue and at least one of you has a green.

So one of you for sure has a green and a blue and the other has either two blues or a green and a blue. Now we’ll explain how your three kids ended up with the eye colors they did. Before doing that we need to remember one thing. We pass on only one of each of the two pairs of cards to our kids. As you can see, both the husband and wife in this example have one of each card. In this case. The husband passed a brown and a green card and the wife a clear and a blue. The child has brown eyes but could have blue or green eyed children because of the clear card. Here is one way that each child could end up with different colored eyes: How Does A Baby Get Blue Eyes For both the green and the blue eyed child, each parent had to pass a clear card. Then the green or blue depends on whether a green got passed down or not. Bringing It Back to Genes Up until now I have been talking about cards but of course they are just a representation of genes. How Does A Baby Get Blue Eyes The first gene, brown or not brown, is in the first pair of letters and the second gene, green or blue, is in the second pair. So Bb Gb has one of each card and since there is a brown, this person has brown eyes. Here is a list of possible gene combinations (genotypes) and possible eye colors (phenotypes):

Genotype	Phenotype
BB bb	Brown
BB Gb	Brown
BB GG	Brown
Bb bb	Brown
Bb Gb	Brown
bb GG	Green
bb Gb	Green
bb bb	Blue

So there you have itprobably way more than you wanted! Recessive traits like blue eyes can lie dormant in the genes for hundreds of years waiting for the chance to awaken and be seen. That chance comes when two carriers come together and have children. : How can two brown-eyed parents have blue-eyed children?

Does height come from mom or dad?

– Genetics are among the prominent factors that contribute to how tall you’ll be. As a general rule of thumb, your height can be predicted based on how tall your parents are. If they are tall or short, then your own height is said to end up somewhere based on the average heights between your two parents.

Who has stronger genes mother or father Why?

Genetically, you actually carry more of your mother’s genes than your father’s. That’s because of little organelles that live within your cells, the mitochondria, which you only receive from your mother.

Can a child have different eye color than both parents?

Yes. The short answer is that brown-eyed parents can have kids with brown, blue or virtually any other color eyes.
Eye color is very complicated and involves many genes.
To begin to understand how parents with brown eyes could have blue-eyed children, let’s imagine that eye color is due to a single gene, EYCL3, which comes in two versions or alleles, brown ( B ) and blue ( b ).

Genetically speaking, then, people with brown eyes could be either BB or Bb while people with blue eyes could only be bb, Example of a one-gene model for eye color. For two parents with brown eyes to have a blue-eyed child, both parents must genetically be Bb, When this happens, there is a 1 in 4 chance that these parents will have a bb child with blue eyes.

To understand green eyes in all of this, we only need to review EYCL1 and EYCL3 (EYCL2 is a poorly understood brown eye color gene). Remember, EYCL3 has two versions, brown ( B ) and blue ( b ). EYCL1 also comes in two versions, green ( G ) and blue ( b ). The way these genes work is that if you have a B allele, you will have brown eyes ( B is dominant over b and G ), if you have a G allele and no B allele, you will have green eyes ( G is dominant over b ) and if you have all b genes, then you will have blue eyes.

Can baby have colored eyes if parents don t?

A couple’s children can have almost any eye color, even if it does not match those of either parent. Currently it is thought that eye color is determined by about six genes, so you can imagine how inheritance of eye color becomes very complicated. There are some characteristics of various plants or animals that are determined by two simple genes.

Let’s think about this situation.
If we say brown is dominant to blue (and we pretend that eye color is decided the way you learned it), someone with brown eyes, like your mom, may be carrying one blue allele and one brown allele (but only the brown shows up).
She can pass either of these alleles on to her offspring, so in theory, even though brown is dominant, a brown eyed mom and a blue eyed dad could give birth to a blue eyed child.

Now imagine a third green allele, which is dominant to blue, but recessive to brown. If your mother carried the green allele (but only her brown shows up), she could easily pass the green allele on to you (and in terms of probability, would do so 50% of the time), and matched with your dad’s blue allele, you would have green eyes.

This is a nice way to think about it, but again, eye color is much more complicated, and involves genes that determine the amount of pigment in your eyes, as well as genes that can modify even dominant alleles. The wikipedia article on this is written at a pretty advanced level, but it may help explain what is going on with eye color eye color.

Eye image by Laitr Keiows via Wikimedia Commons

Can a baby have different colored eyes than both parents?

Predicting Eye Color – Because there is still a lot that is not understood about the interplay among genes and their role in determining eye color, it is hard to make predictions about what shade your baby’s eyes will end up being. But there are some probabilities that are worth noting:

Two blue-eyed parents : There is a high probability that the baby will have blue eyes, but this isn’t guaranteed. Two brown-eyed parents : Odds are that the baby will have brown eyes, but if either or both parents have family members with blue or lighter-shade eyes, there is a chance that the baby could have an eye color other than brown. One blue-eyed parent, one brown-eyed parent : There is about a 50/50 chance that the child will have blue eyes. One or both parents with green or hazel eyes : The baby could have green or hazel eyes, but it is difficult to know for sure.

Generally, changes in eye color go from light to dark. So if your child initially has blue eyes, their color may turn green, hazel, or brown. But if your baby is born with brown eyes, it is unlikely that they are going to become blue. It is impossible to predict a baby’s eye color just by looking at the parents’ eyes. The process is much more complicated than that.

Are eye colors inherited from Grandparents?

What role do grandparents play in the traits of their grandchildren? Yes, grandparents’ genes can affect how their grandchildren look. After all, grandchildren get 25% of their genes from each of their grandparents. And genes have the instructions for how we look (and most everything else about us).

So your kids will definitely inherit some of your parents’ genes. Which means they will inherit some of their looks too. But obviously not every trait that your parents have will be passed down to your kids. Your kids won’t be clones after all! Their looks will come from the combination of genes you and your future wife happen to pass down to them.

And these will have come from each of your parents. And so on through the generations. Sometimes eye color inheritance goes against the rules. Via So will your parents’ dark hair or hazel eyes come out in your kids? Probably not because of how these traits work genetically.

If you didn’t get your parents’ darker hair and eyes, odds are they aren’t lurking in your DNA waiting to re-emerge under the right circumstances.
Blonde haired, blue eyed parents by and large have blonde haired, blue eyed kids.
But nothing in genetics is cut and dry.
Some seemingly impossible genetics can and do happen sometimes.

This means that your kids might get your grandparent’s darker eyes or hair even if you have kids with someone with blonde hair and blue eyes. It just would be much less likely than blonde haired, blue eyed kids.