Lighter Or Darker......

[1340H]

Is It Genetically Possible For A Child's Skin Color To Be Darker Then Its Parents Skin Color. Their Was An Article In The Washinton Post That Stated A Child's Skin Color Could Not Be Darker Than It's Parents. It Could Be Lighter But Not Darker. True Or False.

[YT2095]

"throw-backs" are quite common, even expected in some circumstances.

[John Cuthber]

"An Article In The Washinton Post That Stated A Child's Skin Color Could Not Be Darker Than It's Parents."

They should know better.

Any chance of posting a link to the article so we can all have a good laugh at it please?

[tvp45]

Is It Genetically Possible For A Child's Skin Color To Be Darker Then Its Parents Skin Color. Their Was An Article In The Washinton Post That Stated A Child's Skin Color Could Not Be Darker Than It's Parents. It Could Be Lighter But Not Darker. True Or False.

 

I can assure you that is not true. I have several cousins who are darker than their parents.

 

Can you give us the reference for that story? Are you in fact talking about the story in December, 2005 on a DNA change that accounts for white skin? That story, even though the cited study is in dispute, has been bastardized into some strange argument that everyone will eventually be white.

[Psycho]

This is just a ridiculous statement in general, you don't even have to look at it genetically.

 

If a white woman and a black man have children, the child are not white are they, (well technically they could be) they are a mixture of the two skin tone and therefore the child must be darker than the woman.

[1340H]

This is not ridculious statement, go to the page listed below...

 

http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/459/27/

[Psycho]

This is not ridculious statement, go to the page listed below...

 

http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/459/27/

 

Yes it is, it is completely, however probable this maybe the case impossible if the outcome is prevalent in any form as is the case here doesn't exist.

 

Even if being darker were a set of recessive alleles which it clearly isn't there would still be a probability of it occurring.

 

 

What is this article talking about anyway it seems to be quoting from 1500 and 1800, genetics as a useful science has only been round 100-120 years, I mean I am reading quotes, which I might add will be highly inaccurate, from 300BC

 

The article doesn't even understand how genetics works if 2 alleles are codominant.

 

I will give an example:

 

For the sake of argument we have an individual with the genotype Aa who has the phenotype of brown.

 

So they have one 1 Black alleles (A) and one white alleles (a), now coincidently the male who the woman mates with also has the genotype Aa so you get a cross of:

 

Aa with Aa

 

Now the theoretical outcomes say that the chance of get Aa is a half, (as if you cross them you can get Aa or aA which are the same thing) where as the probability of getting aa or AA is a quarter therefore the child can either be lighter, darker or the same colour as the parents, (AA being black, Aa being brown and aa being white) with a higher probability of being the same colour.

 

Of course that is over simplifying it, but if they are completely codominant as this article seems to presume, incorrectly I might add, then the child can quite easily be darker.

 

This article seems to presume quite hilariously that the Chromosomal alleles "blend" together within each other to make new polynucleotide sequences that magically create working proteins, where as this may happen it doesn't happen with in exons, chiasmatal formation happens in the intron sequences, which are just nonsense code.

[lucaspa]

This is not ridculious statement, go to the page listed below...

 

http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/459/27/

 

1. The assumption here is that all the alleles that would give darker skin color are dominant. Therefore if you had a lighter skin color, that would mean the parents only had the recessive alleles and could not produce a darker color. However, that assumption is not true.

 

2. Most of the references come from the 1800s when the predominant genetical theory was "blended characteristics". Under that theory, your statement was true and this is, of course, what was seen. Even so, there is at least one exception to your statement:

"Two white parents in New Jersey, were very much astonished to find in their child unequivocal marks of the African race and blood.... His wife protested her innocence in terms so strong and solemn, that he was finally led to believe in her integrity. Still, no explanation of the phenomenon appeared. At length he sailed for France, and visited a town on its frontiers where her family had resided for several generations, and found, to his joy, that his wife's great grandfather was an African."

 

That paragraph itself contradicts the statement in the OP.

[Adri]

Yes it happened to us. Our son is much darker than both me and my husband. (Sorry I didn't realize I pulled up and old thread)

Edited July 20, 2010 by Adri