Question About Genetics (Inheriting Hair Color And Tallness)

[hitom]

Hello there!

So i dont know much about genetics yet, but im very open minded about it. The situation is my father has dark brown hair and he had a wife back then and they made two children but they divorced. Both of the children have ginger hair. My mother has very dark brown hair and my sister has the very dark brown hair, i have a normal brown hair. My question is, am i a carrier of the ginger hair gene? Since my father has two children with ginger hair from an other relationship, then he must carry the ginger gene, so do i and my sister, i think. As far as i know, for having ginger hair offspring both of the parents must have the genes for the ginger hair, but im not sure if i know it right.

I dont know if it helps but here are the hair colors that i know of in my family:

Fathers side:
Grandmom: Blondish - brown hair
Grandfather: bald (lol), but possibly dark brown since my father went bald too but he had dark brown hair

Mothers side (my mother):
Grandmom: normal brown - dark brown
Grandfather: Normal brown (like mine)

My other question is about tallness, i have a friend, whose father is like 185cm (6feet) tall, and her mother is like the same or 187cm (6.1feet) tall. Now the funny thing is my friend is not 185cm tall, but he is 2 meters (6.6feet) its huge! How is it inherited? Is it the same as hair color, like recessive stuff?

[EDDIE51]

The Ginger gene is present in all Northern European races it is universal to them. You may not show it in your hair or skin but if you are of Northern European descent you still carry it, So it can show up in a child even if there are no 'ginger' relatives even back several generations.

[factor-fiction]

Look at Prince Harry as an example

[EDDIE51]

More details here
http://www.myredhairgene.com/page1/page1.html

[Old_Geezer]

Arrhhh !!!! No !!!! You and all your descendants are tainted !
Run !

No sure how one can be closed minded re genetics, but I guess one is allowed doubts at any teaching.

There are always changes in the genetic code anyway. And variation since it seems it only some things are boolean settings, many are vaguer, after all one would not expect to be able to be 100% accurate regarding final height for a new born babe. And environment/nourishment, has an effect on such things too, which is why folk tend to become taller in present generations than they did, say during the last war. It's not all in the genes.

[EDDIE51]

there were no 'redheads' in my family for at least 4 generations but 3 of my Grandchildren have red / Ginger hair and are much admired for it.

[boxtops]

The suggestion is that a man is always taller than his mother - which bears out in your example.

[hitom]

can someone read the whole detail of my question and answer to them please lol...

[Peter Pedant]

Hi hitom

Ginger - gene inherited on a different bit of DNA than other hair colour.
So if you are dark haired - you may express it but ya cant see it

Frequency - for ginger I havent looked it up but it is NOT ubiquitous,
but I am pretty sure you only need one to express it ( autosomal dominant ).
If you are fair haired and expressing ginger you turn out as carrot haired.
Altho the ginger gene in North England is said to be imported from the vikings around 900 AD - the most red headed population in the world is... North of England. [ There is said to be an advantage of better converstion of Vit D in weak sunlight, but I am not sure if that is true )

what else....

Height is polygenic = contributions of more than one gene.

here a statistical thingey called "reversion towards the mean" is important.

Tall fathers and tall mothers DONT have tall children, because if they did they would in a few generations have 8 ft kids....
They in fact have generally smaller - less tall - kids
this is reversion towards the mean in action !

[beso]

We are not simply products of gene inheritance.

Environmental factors in one generation while growing up affect the expression of the genes for at least a couple of subsequent generations.