How does genetics influence your baby’s personality and looks

Posted By : Berry

How Does Genetics Work?

 

I am sure you might have tried to picture your baby as you wait for him. Will he be having bushy eyebrows like his father? Will he have curly hair like him? Or is he going to look like your father?

 

Experts do reckon that in a human being’s 46 chromosomes, there are 60,000 to 100,000 genes. A baby acquires 23 chromosomes from the father and the rest 23 chromosomes from the mother. One pair of parents can produce 64 trillion different children with all the possible gene combinations. We think now it is pretty clear that how impossible it is to predict just what your baby will look like.  The science of genetics is highly complicated, but a short course could deliver you with the required information to guide you.

 

Do you remember learning of fruit flies and genes in high school biology class? You were told that the dominant gene always does beat the recessive ones. The scientists has always admitted that it is much simpler to study fruit flies when compared to humans.

 

Eye Color

There would be at maximum three shades of eye colour like blue, brown and possibly green if only there were just one pair of genes associated with selecting eye colour. As the eye colour is a polygenic trait, the human eyes come in a whole spectrum of different shades of these colours.

 

The amount of melanin or brown pigment, in the iris, is what determines your eye colour. If your eye has large amounts of melanin or brown pigment, you will have dark eyes, blue if you have a very little amount and other colours such as hazel, green have varying amounts.

 

Facial and Body Features

Some of the facial features like widow’s peak, facial symmetry and dimples are considered to be dominant and which are filtered down through the generations. The toenail shape, finger shape, Hand shape and unusual traits like hair with double cowlicks used to appear over generations.

 

Crooked teeth can be inherited too as the tilt of the teeth, and the configuration of the jaw are genetically determined. Scientists have discovered a specific gene for “gap tooth” and are considered to be dominant.

 

Height and Weight

You could take the average of Mom’s and Dad’s height in order to get a rough estimation regarding the adult height. Deduct two inches for girls and add two inches for boys.

 

Health and nutrition are other powerful factors in your child’s height. Let’s suppose that our baby’s genes are programmed for 5 feet 5 inches, but she may not get there due to inadequate diet. Enhanced diet has added to greater height over the centuries as well.

 

Hair Color

 

Dark hair is predominant over light. Parents with alike hair colour might give birth to a baby with a hue that looks slightly different but probably within their colour range.

 

Surprising colours might appear from parents having different hair colours. This case happens only when a recessive colour gene in one parent comes within and get mixed with another one. If a black-haired parent bearing a recessive gene of blond hair could probably give birth to a blond child only if that gene is mixed and expressed along with a blond gene from the other parent.

 

In the case of red hair, it was thought recessive once, but it’s now believed to be dominant over blond. You could even be a redhead and not have a clue. Maybe your hair will have a reddish hue that is concealed by a black or brown pigment.

 

Personality

 

Various personality tendencies are genetically hardwired in your baby from birth itself. But the environment has a huge influence on behaviour too. For example, a kid might inherit the tendency of jumping into activities that are risky.
In the exact same way, a kid who inherits a perfect pitch or creative bent will develop in an encouraging environment. The talent might lie fallow if they didn’t get exposed to musical instruments or art materials.