The "Living with the Genetic Mutants" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Back on July 21st I wrote about going to the eye doctor and having his assistant, Layne, tell me that at one time everyone had brown eyes and only with changes in our environment did the color of our eyes start to change.  I'm not sure I believed him and I'm not sure how many of you believed what I wrote that day.  Well, believe it!  Why?  Because I just read an article written by Professor Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen who said, "Originally, we all had brown eyes." Ah, Ha!  So now I can also believe it and I will tell Layne that when I return in a year, since I'm sure he thought that I thought he was crazy when he told me that.  Professor Eiberg said, "A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a "switch", which literally "turned off" the ability to produce brown eyes."  The "switch" was a change from an "A" (adenineto) to a "G" (guanine) in the OCA2 gene that regulates the pigmentation of our eyes, hair and skin coloration.  The mutation didn't totally deactivate the OCA2 gene or all blue-eyed people would be albinos.  The Professor believes that the mutation took place 6,000 to 8,000 years ago in the northern region of the Black Sea where the great agriculture migration to the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic period.  That one person who had the mutation occur within them is responsible for all the people in the world with blue eyes.  Be easy to trace your ancestry if you have blue eyes, wouldn't it.  

This photo shows my daughter-in-law Barb and my
grandson Caden.  Both of Barb's parents must have
had the blue-eye gene in order for her to her her
beautiful eyes and Caden got his from his parents,
so my son Derek, Caden's father, must have the gene.
Means that either LDub or his wife, Carol, carries
the blue-eye gene. I guess we could find out by
testing, but does it matter?  I guess we're all
in some way genetic mutants!

I also read that neither the first person to have the mutation nor his or her children would have had blue eyes themselves, since blue eyes are a recessive trait and therefore must be inherited from both parents.  Had to have happened from marriages within that family, through maybe distant relatives, that the blue eye color appeared.  If you have blue eyes, your neighbor or friend who shares your azure irises, is a distant relative.  The variation in the color of the eyes from brown to green can be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed people can only experience a small degree of variation because they will always be blue.  The mutation from brown to blue eyes isn't good or bad, but is one mutation such as baldness, freckles and beauty spots that has occurred over time in nature.  Wonder who the first bald guy was that I can trace my heritage back to and where in the universe he lived.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.