If mom has brown eyes and dad has blue eyes, what kind of eyes will the child have? The color of the child's eyes is based on the color of the parents' eyes. Grandparents gene

For every parent, the eye color of their son or daughter is important, but not everyone knows that its formation depends on many factors, sometimes even beyond the control of mom and dad.

The life of a baby begins long before the process of conception. Even when planning a pregnancy, future mothers and fathers imagine what their baby will be like: a boy or a girl, dark-skinned or light-skinned, blond, brunette or brown-haired, what kind of smile he will have, what eye color he will have and who the child will look more like. Everyone dreams that the heir or heiress will take the best facial and character traits from their parents and closest relatives. And although it is not possible to predict the baby’s appearance, with some degree of probability it is possible to determine the child’s eyes from the eyes of the parents.

What determines eye color

In any person, the shade of the iris is determined by the presence of a special dark pigment called melanin. It is its concentration that has the maximum effect on the baby’s eye color. The more dark coloring substance there is in the iris, the brighter and darker it will be. The amount of this pigment depends only on genetics and is determined by heredity. It is impossible to reliably know what the shade of a child’s eyes will be. It is believed that the trait is 90% determined by the laws of genetics, and 10% depends on the influence of environmental factors. And no matter how surprised we may be, the likelihood of a blue-eyed child being born to brown-eyed parents still exists.

What are the different eye shades?

Traditionally, there are 4 colors: green, blue, brown and gray. But there are many more different shades.

Blue and grey. There are more people with gray and blue eyes living in Russia. In light-eyed people, the iris constantly changes its shade - its color depends on well-being, mood, lighting, and even on which side the light falls from. In newly awakened newborn babies, the iris becomes cloudy, in those who are upset or offended it turns slightly green, in cheerful ones it takes on a bluish tint.

Green. Eyes of this color are considered the rarest - only 2% of the world's population have them. This is very rare, but, for example, they occur more often in women than in representatives of the stronger half of humanity. According to statistics, Turkey has the largest number of green-eyed people - about 20%. It is believed that light shades of the iris are a consequence of mutation processes.

Brown. 10,000 years ago, everyone on the planet had brown eyes, and today this is the most common shade. In Belarus and Ukraine, half of the inhabitants are brown-eyed, and in Latin American countries their number is more than 80%.

In addition to the main colors, there are many rarer ones: blue, yellow, amber, olive and black.

What eye color do newborns have?

Up to 90% of babies are born light-eyed. This can be finally judged by about two to four years, but there are exceptions to the rule when the eyes changed much later. There is a scientific explanation for this fact: the pigment melanin, which is involved in the formation of the shade of the iris, begins to be produced with age. Therefore, you should not closely examine the baby who has just been born and wonder why the parents have brown eyes, but the child has a different color. It’s worth waiting a while and admiring how the shade of your child’s eyes changes.

Does the color of a child's eyes depend on his parents?

A special table of eye color for a child from parents has been developed, which suggests finding out what kind of eyes the future baby will have. At the same time, you should not count on the data posted in it with 100% probability: everything in the world is relative, and nature can always intervene and perform a miracle that is not described in any textbook. Can blue-eyed parents have a brown-eyed child? After studying the table, you can get answers to similar questions.

Child's eye color chart by parents.

Rules of genetics

It is impossible to predict as accurately as possible what shade your baby’s irises will be. But before you ask doctors and geneticists why blue-eyed children are born to brown-eyed parents, you should remember that the genes of great-grandparents influence the appearance of the child, including the color of the iris. Therefore, two brown-eyed people may well have a blue-eyed fidget. In addition, it has been proven that dark colors are dominant, and if one of the parents has brown eyes, then most likely the baby will have the same. It is often found that the parents have brown eyes and the child has blue eyes. The probability of such a turn of events is 6.25%, and it will increase if representatives of previous generations turn out to be blue-eyed.

Most future parents want to quickly find out what their child will look like and who the baby will look like - mom or dad?

If facial features are difficult to predict, then eye color can be calculated even before the birth of a child; the science of genetics will help with this, which will give the optimal answer to the question of what eye color a daughter or son will have.

Eye color at birth

Almost all children, namely 90% of them, at birth have the same eye color - blue, and only the remaining 10% can be born with a different shade, which is due to the individuality of the body and heredity.

The primary eye color remains in children up to 4 years of age, during which time it gradually changes, reaching the final shade. Cyan either stays blue, fades to gray, turns green, or darkens to brown.

There are several scientific hypotheses that explain such metamorphoses, the main one says that newborn children lack melanin, a coloring pigment that appears with age, and the shade of melanin depends on genetic predisposition.

Scientific assumptions

Previously, there were many different hypotheses that suggested how eye color is transmitted in a child, and what plays a dominant role in this. The most convincing hypothesis was the one that gave rise to Mendel's law. Mendel's law determines the color of the eyes and hair of the unborn child, based on the fact that dark genes are dominant. Phenotypes encoded by dark genes take precedence over the individual characteristics of light genes.

Back in past centuries, scientists Mendel, Darwin and Lamarck described not only the pattern, but also exceptions to the basic rule.

Basic patterns:

• parents with dark eyes mostly give birth to brown-eyed children;
• the descendants of those whose eyes have light shades (blue or gray) will in the vast majority of cases inherit this distinctive feature;
• if the father and mother have eyes of different colors, then the child’s eye shade will be between the parent’s or will be dark, since the dark gene is dominant.

From the assumptions described above, the modern science of genetics was formed, which today makes it possible to calculate the exact percentage of the characteristics of ancestors and descendants and find out what color the child’s eyes will be.

Probability percentage

Based on the characteristics of the parents’ appearance, it is possible to determine the probability, up to a percentage, of what kind of eyes the child will get. Let's look at the table:

For greater clarity, look at the picture.

If future parents are paying special attention to the issue of their child's eye color, they will probably be interested in the following facts:

• the most common eye color on Earth is brown;
• green is the rarest shade; only 2% of the planet's population has eyes of this color. Most green-eyed people are born in Turkey, but in Asian countries, South America and the Middle East, green eyes are very rare;
• Residents of the Caucasus have blue eyes, while Icelanders have predominantly green eyes.

Parents of the baby also need to know that sometimes the child may have a different eye color; this rare phenomenon is called. Do not be afraid of this, heterochromia is not a disease or any pathology, it is only an individual feature, albeit quite noticeable.

The most interesting thing for future parents is to think whether the baby will be a girl or a boy, whose nose the baby will have and what kind of eyes he will have - blue, like his mother's, brown, like his grandfather's, or maybe green, like his great-grandmother's? With gender, it’s somehow simpler; on an ultrasound, if the mother wants, they will most likely tell who will be born, but what about eye color? After all, I can’t wait to imagine how the baby will be born! With appearance, everything is not so simple, but the “mirror of the soul”... You can guess the color of the child’s eyes. A table for determining the shade of the iris exists and will help with this.

Newborn's eyes

What color the baby's eyes will be is determined in the first trimester of pregnancy, or more precisely towards its end, in the eleventh week. But almost without exception, babies are born with only occasionally dark-eyed newborns. This does not mean that the color will not change. By about a year, sometimes even by three to five, the eyes become the way nature intended them, or, if you want, which genes predominate in the baby. The child's eye color changes just in time for this period of life, starting from 6-9 months. Only in brown-eyed people will it become permanent in the first months. It happens that a baby is born with eyes of different colors. This phenomenon occurs in approximately one percent of cases out of a hundred and is called heterochromia.

Melanin, which is responsible for the color of the eyes and is released when exposed to light, is simply not produced in the mother’s tummy. This explains why all newborns have the same. So, don’t torture yourself trying to discern the color of your beloved baby’s eyes. Be patient, you will soon see what the baby is like.

Child's eye color and genetics

Many people remember how they said in biology classes that brown eye color dominates over others. This, of course, is true, but even if the eyes of both mothers and fathers are the same, there is still a small chance of giving birth to a child with green eyes or a blue iris. So put jealousy aside, turn on your brains and begin to figure out why, what and why. It’s no secret that some couples break up precisely because brown-eyed parents give birth to a bright-eyed child.

Of course, relying on science, you can understand genetics. After all, it is she who gives the answer to the question of what eye color the child will have. There is an agreement that eyes, like hair, are inherited according to the principle of the predominance of genes responsible for dark color. Gregor Mendel, a scientist-monk, discovered this law of inheritance more than a hundred years ago. For example, with dark parents the children will most likely be the same, but with light parents it will be the other way around. A child born from people with different phenotypes may be average in hair and eye color - between both. Naturally, there are exceptions, but these are rare.

Determining eye color

Everything described above can be presented in table form. Using it, everyone will presumably determine the color of the baby’s eyes.

It is not difficult to understand what the child’s eye color will be. The table according to which this can be done confirms Mendel’s law, but the same exceptions to the rules remain in the form of an insignificant percentage. No one knows what nature will do.

By the way, the fact that dark color is dominant at the genetic level has led to the predominance of brown-eyed people throughout the world. According to some reports, the child will not have light eye color at all in the future.

Blue-eyed people, according to scientists, did not exist at all ten thousand years ago. Everyone with this iris shade has the same ancestor, according to researchers.

Has fewer people than any other. Due to the fact that only every fiftieth inhabitant has this shade, at different times and among different peoples, according to tradition, they were either burned at the stake, or praised and treated with respect, endowed with witchcraft abilities in both cases. And even today people with brown eyes hear that they have an evil eye and can put the evil eye on someone.

Among the various variations of the three main shades of the iris, it is very rare to find people with red eyes from blood vessels. Although they look unpleasant and even scary, they are not to blame for the fact that they were born albinos. Melanin, due to which the irises of the eyes differ in color, is practically absent in such people.

Eyes are the mirror of the soul

And one more interesting fact, some people paid attention to it, some didn’t, but the eye color of most, if not all, light-eyed people changes depending on their mood, well-being, color of clothing, and in stressful situations.

The color of a child’s eyes is no exception. The table above will not tell you about this, and there are no specific rules here. Everything is individual. Basically, when the baby is hungry, the eyes darken. and is capricious - they become cloudy. If she cries, the color is closer to green, and when she is happy with everything, the color is closer to blue. Maybe this is why they say that the eyes are the mirror of the soul.

Many parents of the unborn baby and their relatives try to determine the color of the child’s eyes. The table created for this helps them, of course. But it’s more important that the baby is born healthy. And it is much more interesting to watch how the baby will change and what his eyes, nose, hair will become, and not know in advance. The little one will grow up, and you will see whether he is bright-eyed or vice versa.

Today, special tables have been developed that make it possible to determine the color of a child’s eyes with a high degree of probability. To do this, you need to know what kind of irises his parents have.

What determines the color of a child’s iris?

Each trait in the body is inherited according to a specific type and is encoded in six different genes. This means that depending on the presence of signs in both the father and mother of the child, the amount of melanin in the baby can be predicted. This amount will determine the corresponding shade of the iris.

What exactly determines the color of a child's eyes? The coloring itself is determined by the presence of a specific organic compound - the pigment melanin. The stroma (the supporting structure of organs) contains melanocytes, or pigment cells, that produce melanin. The more pigment contained in the stroma, the more intense the coloring of the eyes.

There are three main gradations of pigment content:

• blue – minimum quantity;
• green – average;
• brown – maximum.

The trait is also influenced by chemical variations in the organic compound. The pattern depends on the amount of melanin, which determines the skin tone as a whole.

There are rare cases of specific genetic pathology when melanin in the cells of the iris is completely absent. Then the translucent blood vessels give the eyes a red tint.

How does inheritance work?

The trait is inherited in a polygenic manner. It is impossible to reliably know what the eye color of the unborn child will be. There is a certain probability that the formation of the baby's iris is determined by the color of the parents' eyes. But exceptions are possible. It is believed that the trait is 90% determined by the laws of genetics, and 10% depends on the influence of environmental factors.

The probability of staining of the iris in a child as a percentage can be presented in the following table:

The likelihood of a child exhibiting a symptom is influenced by several environmental factors, which include:

• Insolation . With intense exposure of the iris to sunlight containing the ultraviolet spectrum, the likelihood of a gradual reactive increase in pigment concentration increases. It is this that blocks excess ultraviolet rays.
• Pathological conditions . They are associated with changes in metabolism and melanin synthesis (hemosiderosis, siderosis, albinism). These eye color changes do not follow the laws of genetic inheritance and are rare.
• Age-related changes . The older a person is, the worse the intensity of metabolic processes in his body. This affects melanin synthesis, which is why the eyes and skin become pale as we age. The appearance of gray hair is also associated with changes in the metabolism of pigment compounds.

Against the background of studying the specifics of polygenic inheritance of the trait, the following facts were revealed that attract attention:

• Residents of the Caucasus region have blue eye color as their dominant color.
• Green irises are rare. Only 2% of the world's population have them.
• Green eye color is especially common among the Turkish population.
• A feature of green shades is heterochromia. This condition is characterized by different colors of the right and left eyes (for example, brown and blue, blue and green).
• In a small number of cases, local heterochromia is recorded. It is distinguished by changes in color within one iris. The intense black coloration of a small round area of ​​the iris can be confused with an additional pupil.
• There is a clear relationship between skin, hair and eye color. The darker a person's skin and hair, the darker the iris.
• The property is simultaneously encoded in six genes that are located on different chromosomes. This is the main reason for polygenic inheritance, which makes it possible to predict retinal staining only with a certain degree of probability.
• The dominant eye color when dyeing is brown. In a small number of cases, parents with brown irises may have a blue-eyed baby. The likelihood of this will be higher if one or both parents have blue eyes in their immediate family. This indicates that the parents' genotype contains recessive genes encoding blue color.
• Some genes that determine the amount of melanin in cells may be linked to other properties, including pathological conditions. Therefore, if parents have congenital diseases, a genetic study must be performed at the pregnancy planning stage. This helps to predict possible pathology in a child and take measures to prevent it.

The color of a child's iris does not always match the color of the parents' eyes. Doctors warn about this even at the stage of pregnancy planning. It is impossible to reliably predict what eye color a child will be born with, because the formation of this trait depends on many factors, both internal and external.

Useful video on how to find out the eye color of your unborn child

While expecting a child, parents think about what the eye color will be and who they will look like.

The tone of the organs of vision is influenced by many factors; it can be calculated.

Shade is a physical trait determined by the eyes of the parents.

A child inherits 50% of his genetic material from his mother and father. Genes mutate to produce alternative forms called alleles, and each allele is different from the other.

The tone of a newborn's iris depends both on the color of the parents' visual organs and on whether the alleles are dominant or recessive. It is affected by the amount of melanin.

What determines the color of a child's iris?

Texture, pigmentation, tissue and vascular factors in the organs of vision. They constitute a unique characteristic of a person.

What determines the color of a child’s eyes is of interest to new or expectant mothers and fathers.

There are 2 conditions that help determine the tone: the amount and pattern of dark brown pigment (known in medicine as melanin) in the part of the visual organs located between the cornea and the lens.

What role does melanin play?

Melanin is produced by cells called melanocytes. This is a pigment that is responsible for the tone of the skin and eyes. Just as sunlight turns the skin into a dark tone, it does so with tint through the iris. When a baby is born and exposed to bright light, this light triggers the production of melanin in the choroid, which leads to a change in color.

Excessive accumulation of melanin leads to the development of pathological conditions and irreversible changes in the tone of the iris.

Genetic trait

Color inheritance comes from mother and father. Genetics plays a significant role. Normal diploid cells have 46 chromosomes, divided into 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and a pair of sexual chromosomes, X and Y. An embryo (an early stage of human development) inherits one from each.

Human cells are composed of fragments of deoxyribonucleic acid. Scientists have discovered that up to 16 material carriers of heredity take part in determining color. OCA2 and HERC2 are considered responsible for this; they are part of the 15 nucleoprotein structure in the nucleus of eukaryotes. Genes consist of different forms of the same gene located on the same homologous chromosomes.

For each trait that the baby will inherit, there are 2 allelic genes. If they are similar, they are called homozygous. If different, then heterozygous. For each trait, one allele (dominant) is expressed, while the other (recessive) is not expressed (the trait it represents does not appear). Recessive are expressed only in the absence of a dominant.

Alleles for shades are usually divided into blue, green and brown. Greens suppress blue, and browns suppress green and blue. If the baby got blue and brown, the eye color will be brown because it is dominant. If a daughter/son has a blue iris, this means that he received blue alleles from his mother and father.

Genes determine color. The material carrier of heredity determines how much melanin is produced in the iris. The more pigment produced, the darker the color. Because melanin production begins at birth, babies' irises appear blue.

It follows from this that heredity affects the shade of the newborn’s visual organs. It is transmitted from parents along with DNA fragments contained in chromosomes.

Have you noticed how people's irises change depending on the brightness of the room? This happens because the choroid is made up of two layers. Sometimes the pigment is present in both layers. Depending on the brightness and diffraction of solar energy perceived by the organ of vision, it can change color.

On some faces they are of different tones. This occurs due to a condition called heterochromia.

When the color changes

The most dramatic changes in tone occur when the baby is 6–9 months old. At this point, enough pigment has accumulated to predict what the final shade will be. But there is a high probability that the color will change.

Green eyes slowly turn to brown, or brown to brown. Changes will occur until the age of three. In approximately 10% of the population, eye shade can change in adulthood.

The baby's eyes will remain blue

Most newborns have blue irises, which may change color over time. Eyes remain blue if both parents pass on their recessive blue genes to the baby. If this is not the case, the color changes to permanent (brown, green or any other).

Most babies of Caucasian origin have dark blue eyes at birth. However, the original tone changes.

Similarly, babies of Asian and African descent have a brown or dark gray tone at birth. Over time they turn black or brown.

Table of possible eye colors for a child

On the left side is a combination of the father's and mother's eyes. They are depicted in the form of color drawings. The right column shows the iris tone that a newborn will get. The percentage is indicated below them; it means what color the baby is most likely to get.

For example:

• Both parents have brown eyes - the probability that the child will have the same is 75% (brown is dominant, which is why babies rarely have blue eyes).
• If one parent is green and the other is brown, the latter is dominant, green is recessive. This means that as the baby grows older, there is a greater chance of getting a brown tone - 50%, and only 37.5% is allocated to the fact that the newborn will have a green iris.
• If the mother and father have green eyes, then in 75% of cases the baby will have a similar color, in 24% - blue and 1% chance of brown eyes.

Information on other options is understood in the same way.

Yellow eyes are very rare. This variation occurs when there is an excess amount of lipofuscin (this is the end product of oxidation within cellular lipids and proteins). More often than not, this tone indicates the presence of kidney disease.

Amber shades are also associated with excess lipofuscin. Eyes can be light amber or dark.

Black eyes in a newborn mean an excess amount of melanin. There is so much of it that light rays are almost completely absorbed. This color type is common among people of the Mongoloid race, in East and South Asia.

Exceptions to the rules

According to Mendel's laws, dominant genes suppress the totality of biological properties and characteristics of an organism with light-colored recessive genes. It is believed that dark-skinned people give birth to the same baby, the same goes for hair and color.

Not only parents, but also close relatives can influence coloration. Grandparents also influence skin and eye shade. If light-colored parents gave birth to a dark-skinned baby, it means there was a dark-skinned great-grandmother in the family. This also applies to babies with eye colors different from their parents.

Some babies have violet-colored visual organs. This is due to the lack of melanin in the iris. This phenomenon is normal. Such eyes are incredibly beautiful and attractive.

You should be concerned if your eyes are different colors and there are other signs indicating the development of a disease. For example:

• Heterochromia is a rare phenomenon in which a newborn's eyes have two different tones. The cause is believed to be a gene change that leads to excessive pigmentation in one of the irises. In rare cases, different colors of different parts of the iris of one visual organ are observed.
• Waardenburg syndrome. A gene mutation occurs that causes changes in the level of pigmentation of the hair, iris and skin. Waardenburg syndrome is also accompanied by sensorineural hearing loss in some children.

It is important to know that eye color changes depending on the color of clothing, environment, stressful situations and emotional turmoil.