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Community => Science and Technology => Topic started by: Radiation on May 05, 2012, 12:25:52 am
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http://news.yahoo.com/origin-mysterious-dark-skinned-blonds-discovered-181239858.html (http://news.yahoo.com/origin-mysterious-dark-skinned-blonds-discovered-181239858.html)
Residents of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific have some of the darkest skin seen outside of Africa. They also have the highest occurrence of blond hair seen in any population outside of Europe. Now, researchers have found the single gene that explains these fair tresses.
A single mutation is responsible for almost half of the variation in Solomon Islanders' hair color, the scientists reported Thursday (May 3) in the journal Science. Most strikingly, this gene mutation seems to have arisen in the Pacific, not been brought in by fair-haired Europeans intermarrying with islanders.
Just thought that this was interesting.
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Is it anything like the Aussie aborigines that when young have light blonde hair, but the hair turns dark when they get older? I wonder if that gene is related in any way to the Solomon people.
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I think it may be the same thing.
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Is it anything like the Aussie aborigines that when young have light blonde hair, but the hair turns dark when they get older? I wonder if that gene is related in any way to the Solomon people.
I know a boy who was born ginger - like, totally ginger - and then he got a tan and his hair turned dark brown.
My great-grandmother was also born a brunette but her hair was platinum blonde by her 20s, but I think that's a different thing.
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My mother had almost platinum hair when she was a baby, but starting at 7, it gradually turned a medium dark brown. I wonder if some pigment cells in some people just have to be 'jumpstarted' by something. I never really gave it much thought.
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My hair started out a bright blond and ended up a dirty blond.
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Is it anything like the Aussie aborigines that when young have light blonde hair, but the hair turns dark when they get older? I wonder if that gene is related in any way to the Solomon people.
I know a boy who was born ginger - like, totally ginger - and then he got a tan and his hair turned dark brown.
My great-grandmother was also born a brunette but her hair was platinum blonde by her 20s, but I think that's a different thing.
I was born with bright red hair. But it all fell out and grew back blonde. Then it got progressively darker as I got older, so that now it's light-medium brown. But then I grew a beard and it came out red.
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My hair started out a bright blond and ended up a dirty blond.
Mine too. It was Pikachu-yellow when I was born, and now it's more like Pepsi-brown. It was pretty gradual, though.
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My hair is kind of a strawberry blond now, though it was near-platinum when I was a child. My mom, though, was originally blond but her hair darkened when she became pregnant with me.
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Funnily enough, my beard and moustache are very red, making them strawberry blond.
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I had strawberry blonde hair and fairly pale skin up until I started school, after which I slowly darkened to my present olive complexion.
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I had dark brown almost black hair as a small kid, then light brown hair with pale blonde highlights, then it settled on a light-mid brown in my teens. For extra fun all my body hair stayed black until my late teens. I got accused of dying my hair a lot.
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Oh I wrote a paper on this. :D Unlike light hair and skin in East Asia and Europe where there is evidence of a positive selection, light hair (and also light skin in the case of Polynesians) is the result of genetic drift caused by genetic isolation (caused by geographic isolation).
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Well, as for these people, they're obviously the true Atlanteans.
I was born with black hair that stuck out from my head. There are some baby pictures of me that are really funny. Then it turned dirt brown and lost all its... stuck-out-ness. It's not that unusual though from what I understand.
Also my mom had straight hair until I was born and then it turned curly. :P
It's kind of funny how this thread so quickly derailed into stories of our magical color-changing hair.
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It's kind of funny how this thread so quickly derailed into stories of our magical color-changing hair.
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