• Question: where do we get our eye colour form, co me and the rest of mi family have completly oppisite eye colours

    Asked by hannahandkatiexxx to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by claireandhannah.
    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      You will have inherited the genes for eye colour from your parents, but you might have different colour eyes because your parents had a ‘recessive’ gene that didn’t affect their eye colour, but was passed on to you. There are quite a few different genes that control eye colour, so the combination of genes that you inherited from your parents might make your eyes a very different colour to theirs.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Eye colour comes from pigment in your eyes. What colour pigment you have is genetically determined, but because of the way genetics works, you won’t necessarily have the same eye colour as the rest of your family.
      You have two copies of every gene – one from your mother and one from your father. Some genes are ‘recessive’, which means that its partner gene will always take preference and determine eye colour. But if each of your parents has one recessive eye-colour gene, it’s possible that you were lucky enough to inherit two copies… and that means that you will have whatever eye colour the recessive gene gives you, even though neither of your parents have that eye colour.

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