personal genomics; eye color; sexual selection: cognitive vs genetic

[gustavolacerda]

If I get my DNA sequenced at 23andMe or DecodeMe, what information do I get? Is my privacy safe?

If my parents do it too, will it tell me where recombination happened in each chromosome? Btw, does anyone know of a visualization of the chromosomes showing some genes (and corresponding phenotypes)?

Kinda like this but more general-purpose and for

Comments

[_tove]

This article is about the theory that blue-eyed men are more attracted to blue-eyed women because cheating would be easy to catch... of course, this wouldn't be that useful in populations where >%80 of the men are blue-eyed.

Also, a lot of babies have blue eyes, even if they grow up to have another color, so this would be an incredibly slow test (in addition to being entirely inconclusive).

As far as I understand it, eye color is not only caused by several genes with several "strengths," it is also the product of more than one physical structure in the eye.

[surrey_sucks]

I did terribly in my genetics class, gene interaction being the most challenging part for me.

Funnily enough, I never notice people's eye color, even when they have been my partner for years. Maybe it's because I'm short and looking in their eyes is difficult!

[isomorphisms]

Thanks for posting that explanation; I'd always wondered where the other eye colours came from, as the usual bare-bones popsci explanations make it sound like everyone will have either brown or blue eyes, and the same shade, at that.

[afanesvoltaje]

I've totally been pondering this very subject!! I had been playing with a theory last year about whether men vs women should preferentially be attracted to someone who stands out genetically in their population.... and then lately, puzzled by the fact that my baby still seems to have very blue eyes at 4 months (I know it's not settled 'til 6, but I still expected to see them start to change by now!) despite my husband being Indian, I'd been wondering quite how it actually worked, including how you end up with hazel.

Thanks for posting a synopsis of just the info I'd been wanting but not yet taken the time to dig up myself!

(of course, now that I know someone got a publication out of a simple idea I'd been playing with I'm kind of jealous...)

[gustavolacerda]

Your baby must be 6 months old by now. What color are they now?

[afanesvoltaje]

You're right on time - I'm impressed.

And... they're still blue! They're sort of a blue/grey... but definitely not brown.

[gustavolacerda]

I've met a surprising number of half-Indian people with blue eyes. At CMU, I remember one of them who was 100% Indian.