Genes responsible for hair color come from both parents. Although the genes passed down from a child's parents determine hair color, variations can result in a child having a different hair color than both parents.
One popular myth is that hair loss in men is passed down from the mother's side of the family while hair loss in women is passed down from the father's side; however, the truth is that the genes for hair loss and hair loss itself are actually passed down from both sides of the family.
The Truth About Dominant and Recessive Genes
Each parent carries two alleles (gene variants) for hair color. Blonde hair is a recessive gene and brown hair is a dominant gene.
It turns out that brown hair is dominant. That means that even if only one of your two alleles is for brown hair, your hair will be brown. The blond allele is recessive, and gets covered up. If two brunette parents have a blond child, they had to have instructions for making blond hair hidden in their DNA.
Hair color is determined by the amount of a pigment called melanin in hair. An abundance of one type of melanin, called eumelanin, gives people black or brown hair. An abundance of another pigment, called pheomelanin, gives people red hair.
Boys, on the other hand, only receive a Y chromosome from their father and an X chromosome from their mother.
The rarest natural hair colour is red, which makes up only one to two percent of the global population. You commonly see these hair colours in western and northern areas of Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland. However, natural redheads may not exist for much longer.
Unless you're of European ancestry, you don't have much of a chance of inheriting this rare hue. If both parents are brunette, they can only have a blonde child if they both carry the recessive blonde trait.
Is it possible for four siblings to each have a different hair color (blonde, red, brown, black)? Absolutely. This would be more common in a large family since red hair is a recessive gene. It would be more likely to start out with lighter colored hair as a child and then darken to some shade of brown.
The only way to present blue eyes is to inherit two copies of the blue-eyed gene. However, brown-eyed parents can pass a recessive blue-eyed gene. Therefore, two brown-eyed partners can birth a blue-eyed baby.
Red is the rarest hair color, according to Dr. Kaplan, and that's because so few MC1R variants are associated with the shade. “Only three variants are associated with red hair,” she says. “If a person has two of these three variants, they almost certainly have red hair.
So what does that all mean for your chances of having a red-headed child? Since you need two pieces of “red hair” DNA to have red hair, your child will only have red hair if they receive “red hair” DNA from both parents. Even if you don't have red hair, you can still pass on a red hair allele to your child!
All men inherit a Y chromosome from their father, which means all traits that are only found on the Y chromosome come from dad, not mom. The Supporting Evidence: Y-linked traits follow a clear paternal lineage.
Unlike nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother.
Is Hair Color Inherited from Mother or Father? Hair color comes from both parents through the chromosomes passed onto their child. The 46 chromosomes (23 from each parent) have genes made up of DNA with instructions of what traits a child will inherit.
If neither parent is a redhead but both carry the gene, there is a 25% chance their child will have red hair and a 75% chance their child will carry the gene themselves. So, that's how two dark-haired parents can end up with a redhead baby. It's only a 1 in 4 odd but it does happen more often than you would think.
For a recessive trait to be expressed the individual must be pure breeding, hence two red heads can not produce any other colour in a child.
Curly hair is dominant, so someone is more likely to have curly or wavy hair if at least one of their parents does. Recent research points to trichohyalin, a protein in hair follicles, as having primary influence over hair curl. However, there are many genes contributing to hair curliness, most of them unknown.
A ginger child can only be born if both parents carry the gene. If one parent doesn't carry the ginger gene, then your child will definitely not be ginger – both parents must carry it, whether they are redheads themselves or not.
Someone with strawberry blonde hair inherits two broken MC1R genes and only a few of the on form of the other hair color genes. Someone with darker red hair inherits the broken MC1R genes but more of the on genes.
Lady Gaga is another artist who chooses to wear her hair blonde, sometimes with wigs, instead of her natural brown.
People with brunette hair are the most attractive.
By presenting pictures of the same woman with different dye hair colors, the researchers found that out of the population analyzed, 67 percent of men preferred the woman with brunette hair and 71 percent of women chose the man with brunette hair.