The genetics behind human eye color have always intrigued scientists. And, eventually they made a breakthrough in understanding them! Amazingly, its just a few “letters” out of the six billion making up the genetic code are responsible for most of the human eye color variations!
After studying the genetics of nearly 4,000 individuals, this finding is revealed. For brown and blue colored eyes, focusing on twins, the siblings and parents show ‘conclusively’ no “gene” for eye color.
What is responsible for the eye-color differences, are largely the ’single nucleotide polymorphisms’ (SNPs - pronounced “snips”). These are the variations in the sequence of letters that make up a single strand of human DNA.
According to BBC News, Dr Richard Sturm from the University of Queensland said,
The SNPs we’ve identified in themselves are not functionally causing the eye colour change, but they are linked very, very closely to something that is.
