Blond Solomon Islanders

[jimmy olsen]

Cool


http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/07/11581598-genetic-mutation-may-explain-mysterious-blond-solomon-islanders?lite

By Meghan Holohan

When Sean Myles worked as post-doctoral student in Carlos Bustamante's lab, he showed Bustamante a photo of a Melanesian child with cocoa-colored skin and bright blond hair, wearing a U.S. military jacket.

Like others, Bustamante,a professor of genetics at Stanford University, initially believed the Melanesians' blond hair came from Europeans who visited the islands and paired with islanders. But Myles, now an assistant professor at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, insisted it was something different. When Myles had visited the Solomon Islands for another research project, he estimated that 5 to 10 percent of the children possessed light locks. So Bustamante and Myles designed an experiment to understand the origin of the blond Solomon Islanders. 

"I think there was some debate that the scientific community was sort of hypothesizing about," says Eimear Kenny, a co-author and post-doctoral scholar in Bustamante's lab at Stanford.

Bustamante, Myles, and their colleagues discovered the Melanesians' blond hair comes from a gene mutation specific only to them. The variant is recessive, meaning that both a mother and father must carry the gene for a child to inherit flaxen hair.   

"It is interesting to have one gene that is associated with pigmentation in a tropical population with blond hair," says Rasmus Nielsen, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkley, who is not part of this study. "There are lots of different mutations that impact skin and hair color and in this case there is one mutation that impacts it, which is quite unusual."

In 2009, Myles collected 1,000 samples by traveling from village to village on the Solomon Islands, working with local chiefs for permission. The researchers first tested 100 samples to look for genetic mutations and were shocked to find one gene contributed to the blond hair—and this gene differed from what caused blondness in Northern Europeans and their descendants.

The test of the remaining 1,000 samples yielded the same results. The researchers noticed a signal on chromosome 9 and when they dug deeper, they discovered that TYRP1, known for influencing pigmentation in mice and humans, caused the blond hair.

"Pretty much everything about these results was surprising. This is really not what we were expecting," says Kenny. "We did not expect to find a single gene."

Generally, a number of genes contribute to skin or hair color, for example. There could be anywhere from 10 to hundreds of genes impacting whether a person is blond. 

While this discovery might appear to answer a simple question, the results have larger implications. Most genetic studies look at North Americans or Europeans and researchers translate the results to represent all people.

"[This impacts] how we think about the design of medical genetic studies and the importance of broadening representations in medical studies," Bustamante says.

And Nielson believes that researchers will gain a better understanding of the human genome by rethinking experiments. 

"You can look at small isolated populations and find very interesting genetic variants," Nielson says.

The study was published Friday in Science.

[Tonitrus]

Sounds like the same phenomenon that creates the "white" (Kermode) black bears in British Columbia.

They certainly weren't impregnated by Europeans.

[11B4V]

 

IT'S TEH WORK OF TEH

[11B4V]

I THINK IT'S SPELLED BLONDE

[jimmy olsen]

I THINK IT'S SPELLED BLONDE

Blond = boy
Blonde = girl

[11B4V]

Looks funny

[jimmy olsen]

Looks funny

I think so too, but that's the rule apparently.

[Razgovory]

IT'S TEH WORK OF TEH

The Marine Sharpshooters did this?

[11B4V]

Well, we are talking about Pacific Islanders

[Jaron]

Dennis Rodman made his rounds.

[Josquius]

I THINK IT'S SPELLED BLONDE

Blond = boy
Blonde = girl

Isn't that an American thing? (well, French really...)
I always just use blonde.

[Jaron]

Americans are fiercely proud of their French lineage.

[katmai]

Americans are fiercely proud of their French lineage.

Non!

[Tonitrus]

Americans are fiercely proud that we used the French to kick off the British.

Fixed