Strangely, black people have blond hair

The Pacific Islanders of the Solomon Islands have the darkest skin if not counting Africans. However, their hair is yellow like Europeans. Now, researchers have discovered a gene that makes this difference.

A gene variant that makes up half of people's hair color changes, the paper published by scientists in Science magazine explains. The most surprising thing is that this gene variant appears to have appeared in the Pacific region, not from Europeans marrying the islanders.

Researcher Eimear Kenny of Stanford University School of Medicine (USA) and colleagues went to Solomon Islands to collaborate with GS. Sean Myles - who discovered that many residents here have blond hair like Europeans.

A baby with dark skin and hair in Solomon Islands.(Source: Livescience)

Researchers collected saliva samples from 43 blondes and 42 black-haired people on the islands to analyze the genetic pattern behind this strange hair color.

The results of the gene analysis show an amazing phenomenon that it is rare for a single feature to be influenced by at least a dozen genes.A gene called TYRP1 on the 9th chromosome of 23 pairs of human chromosomes is responsible for 46.4% of the island's hair color changes. This gene variant acts on an enzyme that forms the color of human skin.

The gene variant did not appear in the European genome, compared with the previous analysis of the genomes of 52 communities around the world. Instead, this gene variant appears to have appeared independently and existed in the Melanesia community.

Therefore, blond people in Solomon Islands do not have blue eyes like Europeans. The green gene created from a single ancestor lived 6,000 - 10,000 years ago. Before that time, no one had blue eyes.

Reference: Livescience