eyes

[Ember]

In a fictional book the crux of the story was that brown eyes are dominant and any offspring would always have brown eyes. Surely this cannot be right. I have brown eyes and my husband has grey eyes and one of my sons has grey eyes. My other son has brown eyes and yet has a blue eyed daughter. No naughtiness on my part I can vouch for that .

[tymac]

each person get a set of genes from each parent so the can be brown/brown blue/blue or brown /blue.It is true that brown is the dominant gene. Meaning that a person who has one brown gene/one blue gene will have brown eyes, blue/blue is the only combo which yields blue eyes . A person with brown eyes may also carrie the recessive gene for blue. If that blue Gene is paired with another blue gene, the child will have blue eyes.

[coggles]

Both my husband and I have blue eyes, as do most of our families. We named our eldest daughter after one of her grandmothers, who had brown eyes - and our daughters eyes changed from the blue when she was born to the most beautiful brown! (a bit spooky). We have had another daughter since and her eyes are very blue. I haven't been up to mischief either!

[tymac]

That is because both you and your husband are blue/blue. You don't carry the gene for brown eyes. You're children can't have brown eyes becuase if one of you carried the brown gene, that person would have brown, but it would still be possible for the children to have eyes of either color

[wildwood]

coggles - your daughter with the 'beautiful brown' eyes will probably still basically have blue eyes, but with another variant overlaying the blue - hence they appear different to the usual brown. If she eventually has children to a blue-eyed man, the children will almost certainly have blue eyes.

Obviously both you and your husband carry another recessive gene for one of the more obscure eye colours. These may be passed on for many generations without showing up. When two people who carry the same gene in recessive form - such as you and hubby - have children, there is a 1 in 4 chance that any children will receive both of these genes and show the eye colour concerned. Check if there are any grey/green/hazel etc. eyed relatives in both your families.

[coggles]

It's really interesting stuff. The only relatives that we know of that have anything other than blue eyes are my grandmother and my husbands' mother. We have had some funny looks, as we tried for years to have children and it was only when I had fertility drugs that we succeeded! - so we know what they are thinking!!! BTW, both our daughters have beautiful eyes, just in case it looked liked I was favouring one over the other!