Curly Wavy Straight Hair Genetics
I am most definitely not a biologist so please take this explanation with that.
Curly wavy straight hair genetics. Today i d like to add a mini post to the series about the genetics behind hair. This means is that if you have one allele of each version of the gene you get some degree of wavy hair a mix of the two genes. In europe other mutations brought wavy and straw coloured hair. Let s look at a curly headed and a straight haired caucasian couple.
This enables bidirectional bending stiffness bending. Curly hairs have an elliptical or d shape in cross section. And caucasian hair is somewhere in between with around 45 having straight hair 40 having wavy hair and 15 having curly hair. Whose hair is most likely to become curly with age.
One way for the couple you describe to have a straight haired child is if the curly headed parent actually has wavy instead of curly hair. But in east asia mutations have led to straighter thicker hair. What hair texture could their offspring get. It may seem like a minor distinction but from a genetic point of view the difference is critical.
These variations are determined by many genes and genetic. Just as curly hairs typically curl the most when wet humidity in the air brings out waves or curls in hair. As mentioned earlier curly hair is an autosomal dominant trait which means that one of the parents has straight hair while the other has curly hair. Studies suggest that different genes influence hair texture and thickness in people of different ethnic backgrounds.
Notably african hair is more coiled and dry. Asian hair is straighter and thicker. The distribution of forms of curly hair is shown in figure 1 and a closer inspection reveals that curly hair fibres are rarely a true coil but exhibit heterogeneity in the direction of the curl in all but the mildest cases. In sub saharan africa genes favour tight curly hair.
This has to do with the fact that not all curly hair genes are created equal. So if you lived in a desert your whole life and suddenly moved to a humid area like the southern us for example you d likely notice that your hair is more wavy or curly. Genetic factors appear to play a major role in determining hair texture straight wavy or curly and the thickness of individual strands of hair. And with the fact that curly hair is sometimes just very wavy and straight hair sometimes very unwavy.
Of course genetics is always more complex than the traditional sorts of theories. Human hair comes with all sorts of colors textures and shapes. This model could even explain how curly haired parents sometimes have a straight haired child and vice versa. So you get genes of both types but the dominant curly hair gene trumps the straight hair gene and expresses itself in the offspring i e yourself.