23andMe hair color results

Goga

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Y-DNA haplogroup
R1a*
mtDNA haplogroup
HV1b2
Recently23andMe added a new trait in their trait section. It's about the color of peoples hair. What does this info mean, I don't understand it? Can somebody help me?

When I was a child I had very very light hair, but now my hair is darker. My parents have black hair, but some of their brothers and sisters have still dirty blond hair, from both sides. My grandmother (paternal) had even red hair, and I have a lot of uncles and cousins with dark blond and even reddish hair. But most of them are dirty blond than reddish.
As far as I do understand this, according to 23andME I have some blond hair genes, but not red genes at all. How is it possible? I thought it would be the opposite, because my (paternal) grandmother had red hair.

And can I see from whom I inherited blond hair genes? From my mother or from my father?

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unfortunately I don't have health results but I can tell on
I am
rs12896399 GT
rs1667394 CT
rs12821256 TT

I seem to have a variant more on rs1667394

So do I have 3-4 variants for "Blonde " hair? Or is it 1-2?
 
Recently23andMe added a new trait in their trait section. It's about the color of peoples hair. What does this info mean, I don't understand it? Can somebody help me?

When I was a child I had very very light hair, but now my hair is darker. My parents have black hair, but some of their brothers and sisters have still dirty blond hair, from both sides. My grandmother (paternal) had even red hair, and I have a lot of uncles and cousins with dark blond and even reddish hair. But most of them are dirty blond than reddish.
As far as I do understand this, according to 23andME I have some blond hair genes, but not red genes at all. How is it possible? I thought it would be the opposite, because my (paternal) grandmother had red hair.

And can I see from whom I inherited blond hair genes? From my mother or from my father?

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Inheritance of these traits is actually pretty complicated, but a simple way to understand most situations is to look at it in terms of Mendelian inheritance rules about dominant and recessive genes. Blonde hair is recessive. To get blonde hair, you need to inherit two recessive genes for it, one from your mother and one from your father. You mentioned that your parents had black hair but each parent had siblings who had light brown/dark blonde hair. So, your parents obviously had a dominant dark hair gene. They might also have carried a light hair gene, but it wasn't expressed because dark is always dominant. In your case, if each of them carry the light hair gene, you could have inherited by chance a light hair gene from each of them and have had light brown hair, but it seems that you inherited the dark hair gene from each of them. That's just the nature of random recombination.

As an example, in my husband's family, one grandparent on each side was blonde and light eyed, and one was very dark haired and dark eyed. He inherited the dark genes, and his sister is blonde and blue eyed. People not being very observant, they often ignored the fact that their features are very similar, and would say they didn't look at all alike. In fact, when his sister was being wheeled around by her very dark haired and eyed mother, people would often ask if she was adopted.:)

In my own case, although my grandfather, all my paternal aunts, and a good number of my first cousins had bright red hair, I didn't inherit the gene either. My brother, however, did, and it expresses itself in his beard.

In areas where there is more homogeneity of phenotype, this doesn't happen as often.
 
Inheritance of these traits is actually pretty complicated, but a simple way to understand most situations is to look at it in terms of Mendelian inheritance rules about dominant and recessive genes. Blonde hair is recessive. To get blonde hair, you need to inherit two recessive genes for it, one from your mother and one from your father. You mentioned that your parents had black hair but each parent had siblings who had light brown/dark blonde hair. So, your parents obviously had a dominant dark hair gene. They might also have carried a light hair gene, but it wasn't expressed because dark is always dominant. In your case, if each of them carry the light hair gene, you could have inherited by chance a light hair gene from each of them and have had light brown hair, but it seems that you inherited the dark hair gene from each of them. That's just the nature of random recombination.

As an example, in my husband's family, one grandparent on each side was blonde and light eyed, and one was very dark haired and dark eyed. He inherited the dark genes, and his sister is blonde and blue eyed. People not being very observant, they often ignored the fact that their features are very similar, and would say they didn't look at all alike. In fact, when his sister was being wheeled around by her very dark haired and eyed mother, people would often ask if she was adopted.:)

In my own case, although my grandfather, all my paternal aunts, and a good number of my first cousins had bright red hair, I didn't inherit the gene either. My brother, however, did, and it expresses itself in his beard.

In areas where there is more homogeneity of phenotype, this doesn't happen as often.
Thank you very much, it was very informative! But according to 23andMe I've still inherited some kind of blond hair gene from (one of) my parents. Because it says at rs12896399: GT. So, as far as I do understand I have 1 variant of it (out of 2)? It says that I've 10% chance of having blond color hair. But can I see from whom I got this gene?


image.jpg
 
unfortunately I don't have health results but I can tell on
I am
rs12896399 GT
rs1667394 CT
rs12821256 TT

I seem to have a variant more on rs1667394

So do I have 3-4 variants for "Blonde " hair? Or is it 1-2?
Sorry, I can't help you. I don't know how this works. I think you have 2 variants, while I do have only 1. But maybe this can help:


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from what I see from your results you seem two have ~ 2 variants?
one in rs12896399

and one in rs12821256

I have one additional in rs1667394 which does seem to make sense because I actually have one parent who is (well was, now grayed) orange blond/light brownish haired.
 
Thank you very much, it was very informative! But according to 23andMe I've still inherited some kind of blond hair gene from (one of) my parents. Because it says at rs12896399: GT. So, as far as I do understand I have 1 variant of it (out of 2)? It says that I've 10% chance of having blond color hair. But can I see from whom I got this gene?


image.jpg


That's what I meant when I said that Mendelian rules are probably only a very rough approximation of how it actually works. If you use the search engine at 23andme and search for blonde hair or blonde hair inheritance, you'll find links to threads where it's discussed, and you'll see that it's more complicated than my Mendelian example above.

As with most pigmentation traits, there are actually more than two genes involved. Also, there are probably regulatory genes whose operation we don't yet fully understand. So, what may be happening is that rather than strictly a dominant/recessive situation, it may be that the gene is either "on" or "off" in terms of melanin production, or perhaps it's on a sort of "dimmer switch". Also as with most pigmentation traits, the effect is cumulative, which seems a difficult concept to grasp for many people . So, if you think of E as a lot of eumelanin creating darker shades, and e as no eumelanin, an inheritance pattern might look like this...EEEEEeee. In that case the person would probably have pretty dark hair. The regulatory genes might also turn the switch on in the presence of certain hormones. For example, many European and even generally West Eurasian children are very light haired as babies, but sooner or later in the vast majority of them it darkens. Extreme emotion or trauma is also sometimes known to turn the switch off and to cause the hair to grey almost overnight. The interaction of all the pigmentation genes plus the regulatory genes plus environmental factors determines the actual physical appearance at any given stage of life.

In order to figure out the exact "trail" of maternal vs paternal inheritance, you would need the genomes of your parents, or at least one of them in order to come to reasonable conclusions. The genomes of descendents of your grandparents might also be helpful if you can't access those of your parents. A lot of people on 23andme have done that and been able to trace the convoluted path of inheritance.

Oh, and as 23andme pointed out on your results page, supposedly 10% of people with your profile still have blonde hair, so there may be a gene or two that we haven't yet discovered.

This is all about probabilities. The traits results on 23andme aren't always correct. For example, it tells me that I shouldn't have an alcohol flush result, and I do indeed have it, although I suppose it's possible I react to the sulfites that are put into wine, for example, or to some other additive put into alcoholic beverages. Likewise, I have two copies of the European Lactase Persistence allele, and yet I started having problems tolerating dairy products in adulthood, although again I might perhaps have developed an actual allergy to something in milk rather than having lactose intolerance.

There's still a lot that they don't know.
 
Blond hair : 2 variants
Bhair_zpsbgufmd0q.jpg


Red hair: 1 variant(carrier)
redhairSNP_zpsqdf5l2sf.jpg
 

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