[Jacob-list] Blue Eyes

[Hobsickle at aol.com]

I don't know everything there is to know about eye color inheritance, but I  
do know a couple things.  In humans, eye color is way more complicated  than 
your High School Biology teacher may have led you to believe.  Darker  eye 
colors are "dominant" to lighter eye colors, but it is not a  complete dominance 
(i.e., colors blend to make greens, hazels, etc.) and it is  controlled by 
multiple loci (i.e., several pairs of genes).  Also, the  relative number of blue 
eyes in a population does not relate to the dominance or  recessiveness of a 
gene, but to the how common it was in the preceding  generations.  (For example 
blue eyes are much more common in northern  Europeans that in most of the 
rest of the world.)
 
My gut feeling is that in Jacobs spotting genes can influence eye  color.  
I've got at least one sheep with a brown eye and a "spotted"  eye--brown in some 
areas and blue in others.  I also wonder if the genes  that contribute to 
lilac might have some influence in eye color.
 
There you go--just a couple of comments.  I'm sure there's more to be  said 
on the topic.
 
-Dan
 
 



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