Clavicularity

ishmaeldreaming:

interwar:

do you ever just look at children of couples in films or television shows and go

no

you are genetically impossible

that is not a dominant allele

ALL THE TIME

It’s got to the point where I really love and appreciate TV families that even look a little bit like a family.

I particularly remember 10 Rules For Dating My Teenaged Daughter which had two dark brown haired parents, one brown haired son (fine…) one blonde daughter (hmmmm really?) and also the middle child with ginger hair. Curly ginger hair. Who I can only assume was adopted.

OH SHIT I’M ADOPTED?

No, seriously, my parents both have brown hair, one of my brothers has brown hair, one has blond hair (though it did get darker as he got older), and I have red hair.

The thing about the genetics of things like hair colour is that multiple genes influence your phenotype, so it’s a bit more complicated than Mendelian inheritance. It’s not just a matter of turning a colour on or off, it’s more like having a bunch of different paint colours and mixing them together in different amounts. From what I know, we don’t actually fully understand all the genes that are associated with hair colour, how they operate and the impact of other factors like the environment.

So like. It might be really unlikely that a family would look like that, but you’d be surprised by how many unlikely things actually happen. /shrug.

#science! #fandom