February Challenge - Rust

Some interesting red head facts:

Red hair occurs on approximately 1-2% of the human population.

The pigment pheomelanin gives red hair its distinctive color. Red hair has far more of the pigment pheomelanin than it has of the dark pigment eumelanin.

Researchers have found that people with red hair require greater amounts of anaesthetic.

Red hair appears in people with two copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16 which causes a mutation in the MC1R protein.

Since both copies of the MC1R gene need to be the red hair versions, to become a redhead, the following possible situations can result in redheaded offspring:

1. Both parents are carriers. There is a 25% chance that any of their children will inherit two r alleles from each parents and will be a redhead.


2. One parent (e.g., mother) is a redhead and the father is a carrier. In this case, every child will inherit one r allele from their mother and has an equal chance of inheriting the R or r allele from the father. Therefore, the chance of each child being redheaded is 50/50.

3. If both parents have red hair, then all offspring will be red headed (rr).

If one of the parent does not carry the red hair (r) allele, then no matter what the other parent's genotype (RR, Rr, or rr), none of their children will have red hair. Although some kids will be red hair carriers if they inherit a r allele.

So, as both my husband and I have brown hair we must both be recessive MC1R carriers. Therefore, each of our children has a 25% chance of being red headed. Question is: would a third child have red hair too????? - not that we're going to find out!!!!

[In other news my new 10-20mm lens arrived today but I'm working til Saturday so can't even try it out properly!!! Also Seth's tongue looking better today]