Genetics explain why some couples can have children with skin of a different color than theirs.

Despite the enormous diversity present on our planet, all humans are 99.9% equal according to genetics. Diversity in appearance is in the genes and appears in precisely that 0.1%. Called alleles, these genes ensure that a person looks like their family. That is, while children are not exact copies of their parents, the traits often match.

With that in mind, the awesome.club decided to research why some babies are so different from their parents. After all, cases like this still baffle the medical community.

Genes determine eye, skin and hair color, as well as details such as inner or outer navels, curly or straight hair, type of thumb and earlobes (joined or separate). What’s more, these genes determine our height and our predisposition to disease. In other words, they practically map our future.

However, sometimes genes skip a generation or simply evolve in a different direction than expected. For example, with evolution humans lost the ability to produce vitamin C in their bodies, which led to a change in the mass of bodies.

And there are other situations where you can see genetics at work, for example when babies don’t look like their parents. Geneticists, researchers and other experts give some explanations for cases like this

Sometimes genes mutate. Yes, they change for no specific reason and can give rise to a new set of features for later generations. That means they can appear in one generation and disappear in the next.

Scientists are aware of some genetic mutations, such as distichiasis, that cause eyelashes to be unusually thick. There is also heterochromia, the famous condition in which the eyes are different colors. Sometimes, similar mutations in genes that determine skin color can cause fair-skinned babies to be born to a darker-skinned couple, or vice versa.

When it comes to offspring, the set of genes is the same, but it is the combination of them that defines what a child will look like. That is, a person’s skin color is the result of the combination of pigmentation from 11 different genes that basically control the amount of melanin produced in the skin.

There are two types of melanin, eumelanin and pheomelanin, and genes are responsible for determining whether a skin will have more eumelanin, which makes the skin darker, or more pheomelanin, which makes the skin lighter and freckled.

If a fair-skinned baby is born to darker-skinned parents, doctors believe the parents may be carriers of fair-skinned genes. These genes can be dormant in both the father and the mother, but they end up being passed on to the baby. And the opposite can also happen, that is, a dark-skinned baby is born to light-skinned parents. Sometimes the genes just decide to “wake up”, and sometimes they lie dormant. The scientific community is still trying to understand what causes these changes.

Albinism could be another cause behind the obvious difference in skin color between a child and their parents. Albinism is a genetic disorder characterized by the total or partial absence of melanin.

Albinism can be partial and leave the skin blemished, or it can be complete. However, it can appear even when the parents have dark skin. Unfortunately, in many African countries there are superstitions that cause families to reject children with albinism.

Sometimes the issue is just maternity and paternity. Darker-skinned women can have fair-skinned children if the father is fair-skinned, and vice versa. This is the case for Zendaya, who has a father of African American descent and a mother of European descent. But of course when fatherhood and motherhood are known, there is no surprise.

However, in cases where the paternity is not known, confusions related to IVF can sometimes occur. A couple of people with black skin can ask for a donor with African descent, but due to mistakes (which can always happen), the child can be born with white skin.

One very obvious reason is adoption. Consider, for example, the family of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their children. Maddox was adopted in Cambodia and Zahara was adopted in Ethiopia. Jolie and Pitt had their first biological child, Shiloh, in 2006. Afterwards, they decided to adopt Pax in Vietnam. Then came the twins Vivienne and Knox, who were born in 2008.

When Ben and Angela Ihegboro went to the hospital for the birth of their daughter, Nmachi, they were both in for a big surprise. Although the couple is Nigerian and has black skin, the daughter was born with white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes.

Doctors took into account all the possibilities presented here and concluded that fair skin and blue eyes could be a consequence of some kind of albinism, recessive genes or even an unknown genetic mutation. Fortunately, Nmachi’s parents declared that they would love their daughter as much as their other children.

Is there any case of genetic mutation in your family? And do you think that the explanation and hypotheses brought by science explain all the doubts that these cases generate?