Large Study Identified 50 New Genes for Eye Color

Article: 50 new genes for eye colour
Source: King's College London, via ScienceDaily
Published: March 11, 2021

An international team of researchers conducted a genome-wide association study of the genes involved in eye color. The study comprising almost 195,000 people across Europe and Asia, the largest genetic study of its kind to date, identified 50 new genes for eye color. Additionally, the study found that eye color in Asians with different shades of brown is genetically similar to eye color in Europeans ranging from dark brown to light blue. While exploring the genetics of eye color might appear trivial on the surface, such a study has both societal and clinical relevance. As one of the senior authors states, “The findings are exciting because they bring us to a step closer to understanding the genes that cause one of the most striking features of the human faces, which has mystified generations throughout our history. This will improve our understanding of many diseases that we know are associated with specific pigmentation levels.” Clinically, this study contributes to a better understanding of eye diseases ranging from ocular albinism to uveal melanomas. Equally important to the basic sciences is the confirmation and further discovery that the genetic basis of a person's eye color are polygenic, much more so than previously thought. For simplicity, most of us were taught in grade school to consider eye color as an example of a simple monogenic (or bigenic) trait following Mendelian genetics, with brown being dominant over blue. Explorations into the topic in later years reveals a more complex picture with many other genes involved. Though the simplified conception of eye color will not likely leave the public eye anytime soon, the present study is valuable in providing a more nuanced expansion of that picture.

My rating of this study: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Further reading: Eye color: the myth