Brown and green alleles will always out-rule blue alleles, with brown being the most dominant. Blue will always be recessive. If both parents have a blue allele, it is likely that the child will have blue eyes.
The Single Gene Trait
Brown eyes are dominant and blue eyes recessive.
The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive. If both parents have brown eyes yet carry the allele for blue eyes, a quarter of the children will have blue eyes, and three quarters will have brown eyes.
Both parents have to pass along the blue eye gene in order for their child to have blue eyes. That doesn't necessarily mean that the parents themselves have to have blue eyes; it's possible they carry the gene, but it is recessive. However, a blue-eyed child is almost certain if both parents have blue eyes.
The allele for brown eyes is the most dominant allele and is always dominant over the other two alleles and the allele for green eyes is always dominant over the allele for blue eyes, which is always recessive.
A couple's children can have almost any eye color, even if it does not match those of either parent. Currently it is thought that eye color is determined by about six genes, so you can imagine how inheritance of eye color becomes very complicated.
Both parents with green eyes: 75% chance of baby with green eyes, 25% of baby with blue eyes, 0% chance of baby with brown eyes. One parent with brown eyes and one parent with blue eyes: 50% chance of baby with brown eyes, 50% chance of baby with blue eyes, 0% chance of baby with green eyes.
Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.
What is the rarest eye color? Green is the rarest eye color in the world, with only 2% of the world's population (and fewer than one out of ten Americans) sporting green peepers, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).
A condition is considered Y-linked if the altered gene that causes the disorder is located on the Y chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes in each of a male's cells. Because only males have a Y chromosome, in Y-linked inheritance, a variant can only be passed from father to son.
Because less melanin allows for more light to pass through the eye, those with blue eyes can often tolerate longer periods of lower light. Blue eyes appear to have a lower risk of developing cataracts than brown eyes.
Unfortunately, unless you were born with blue eyes, there aren't any ways to naturally change your eye color. However, you can create the illusion of having blue eyes. We've answered your questions about getting blue eyes so you can keep your eyes safe and healthy while experimenting with different colors.
People who are born blue-eyed are at higher risk of developing age-related macular degeneration. The research shows that there is less pigment in blue eyes, and green eyes for that matter, than there is in brown eyes. This means more light is able to penetrate blue eyes. This makes lighter eyes more sensitive to light.
Flexi Says: Two brown-eyed parents (if both are heterozygous) can have a blue-eyed baby. If both the parents have brown eyes, then there is generally a 25% chance for their child to have blue eyes. Because both the brown-eyed parents have a recessive blue-eye gene and can pass it to the next generation.
And while it is true that you get half of your genes from each parent, the genes from your father are more dominant, especially when it comes to your health.
Someone with brown eyes may be carrying one blue allele and one brown allele, so a brown-eyed mother and a blue-eyed father could give birth to a blue-eyed child. Now mix in a third green allele, which is dominant to blue, but recessive to brown.
One thing these survey results have in common is that light-colored eyes — green, gray, blue, and hazel — are named as the most attractive eye colors in the world. In one large survey of more than 66,000 people, green was chosen as the most attractive eye color. Green is also among the rarest eye colors.
When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes.
If a gene version is dominant, it will dominate whether it came from mom or dad. Your chances of getting a dominant trait don't depend on which parent it came from. If mom gives you a dominant brown eye version of an eye color gene, odds are you'll end up with brown eyes. Same thing if dad passes the same gene.
How does it work? Babies inherit equal eye color genetics from both parents — 50% from each. From here, genes mutate to produce what are called alleles. Alleles are alternative forms of a gene that, in this case, are responsible for giving your baby a certain eye color.
Baby eye color is genetic, and genes pass from generation to generation. So if one grandparent had blue eyes, but the other had brown eyes, and you were born with brown eyes, and had a baby with another brown-eyed person, there is a chance that baby could be born with blue eyes.
The largest concentration of green eyed people is in Ireland, Scotland and Northern Europe. In Ireland and Scotland, 86% of people have either blue or green eyes. There have been 16 genes identified that contribute to eye colour.
There are plenty of blue-eyed Asians. This probably happens when the traditional blue-eyed allele comes into a family from a (possibly very distant) European ancestor. Blue eyes then resurface in a child generations later if they inherit the allele from both parents.
Depending on what genes they get and the way that these genes are turned on or off and expressed, can play a role in eye color. That's how you're able to get one sibling with light blue eyes versus another sibling that has dark brown-colored eyes.