In fact, about 10,000 years ago, all humans had brown eyes. In the meantime, you can take comfort in the fact that your own individual eye color is like your fingerprints: something that is unique only to you.īrown eyes are the most common: Over half the people in the world have them, according to the AAO. There are at least eight other genes that influence eye color. Different variations of it can cause the OCA2 gene to produce less melanin, which leads to lighter-colored eyes. HERC2, for example, is a gene that turns the OCA2 gene on or off as needed. “There are several different genes involved, which we’re just beginning to learn about and understand,” Kaplan explains. It is impossible to predict what color their orbs will be. In case you were planning to decorate your impending grandbaby’s nursery to match the color of their eyes, be prepared to be disappointed. But if you have at least one functional copy, your eyes will be darker, on the spectrum of green, hazel or brown. If you inherit two nonfunctional copies of the OCA2 gene from your parents, you will go on to develop blue eyes. It makes melanin, a substance in your body that produces hair, eye and skin pigmentation. What determines your eye color?Ībout 75 percent of eye color is due to one gene, OCA2. The truth, however, is a bit more complicated, Kaplan notes. In high school biology class, for example, you probably learned that brown was dominant and blue was recessive, so two blue-eyed parents would not be able to have a baby with brown eyes. “We used to think only one gene determined eye color,” says Julie Kaplan, M.D., a physician at the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare at the Cleveland Clinic. Only about 2 percent of the world’s population sport this shade.Īs to why, that answer isn’t so simple. The answer is green, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). At some point, you’ve probably wondered what the rarest eye color is.
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