One of the more remarkably things about watching Terrence Malick's film "The Thin Red Line" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Red_Line_%281998_film%29 ) are the scenes with blonde haired brown skinned natives of the south pacific islands. At first I thought that the director was just adding a surreal dimension to his film but it turns out that the Melanesians, the occupants of a group of islands west of Australia (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesians and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesia ) are really blonde, or at least some precentage of them are. One reason for bringing this point up now is that the gene for the characteristic has been found and reported recently; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/science/another-genetic-quirk-of-the-solomon-islands-blond-hair.html?_r=1
Quoting from the NY Times article: |They were soon able to identify the single gene responsible for the |variance in hair color. Called TYRP1, the gene is known to influence |pigmentation in humans. | |The researchers also found that the variant of TYRP1 that causes |blond hair in Solomon Islanders is entirely absent in the genomes |of Europeans. I haven't been keeping up with genetics much but I thought that the gene for blonde hair was recessive and that it was predicted that in maybe 50-100 years there would be few or no "true" blondes left because of marriage with non-blondes. I guess this is no longer true. For the original research article, it is available on the "Science" website: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6081/554 -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=17628 or send a blank email to leave-17628-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
