Your Eyesight Will Improve Significantly

photo credit: Dylan Luder

If your sister got Dad’s blue eyes, but you didn’t, there’s another way to remedy the problem besides inserting colored contacts.

Wait for a genetic mutation.

Scientists have discovered that, originally, we all had brown eyes. It is a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes, and that mutation only occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. “So before then, there were no blue eyes,” notes Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.

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That mutation affected the gene involved in the production of melanin, the substance that gives color to our skin, eyes, and hair (without this pigmentation, we’d be albino). This mutation created a sort of switch, which limited the production of melanin in the iris. Like a dimmer, this “switch” diluted brown eyes to blue.

How is eye color determined?

Different eye colors are produced because of the different amounts and patterns of pigment in the iris. But these amounts and patterns are controlled by the pairing of genes inherited from both parents. There are at least three gene pairs controlling human eye color: the brown allele is always dominant over the green and blue alleles, the green allele is always dominant over the blue allele, and the blue allele is always recessive.

If the blue allele is recessive, why do people have blue eyes?

Blue-eyed folks have inherited a pair of blue alleles from both their mother and their father. That is, blue eyes will occur only if all four alleles are for blue eyes. This is why blue eyes are relatively rare, found mainly in people of northern European descent.

If this child were to get one green allele in the mix, she or he would have green eyes. If a brown allele is present, regardless of what the other three alleles are, the child would have brown eyes, the most common color, predominant in people of Asian and African descent.

A common ancestor

Eiberg and his team examined the DNA of review blue-eyed individuals in countries including Jordan, Denmark, and Turkey. This genetic material came from females, so it traced maternal lineages. What they were able to show is that all the people who have blue eyes have exactly the same gene changes that are linked to the one mutation that makes eyes blue. In other words, this new research has determined that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA,” says Eiberg. That genetic switch somehow spread first throughout Europe and now other parts of the world, presumably because it gave the holder some sort of evolutionary advantage.

So the next time you call your blue-eyed sister a “mutant,” be prepared for her to yell back that she’s genetically “superior.” And then your mom can curse the original blue-eyed ancestor that started it all—before she grounds you both.

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