Redheads

I am a redhead.  My brother and two of my sisters are redheads.  My parents are not redheads.


I've always been interested in the genetics behind being a redhead and studying the recent dna tests has brought that interest to mind again.  It is estimated that only about 1-2% of the world's population has red hair, though many more people are "carriers" meaning they have one recessive red hair gene.  It takes two recessive genes to make a redhead. When listing a dominant gene, the code to use is a capital letter (R in this case) and a lower case (r in this example) is used to indicate the recessive gene.

Here is a good explanation of how the 'redheaded gene' works:  myredhairgene

And here is a list of links about this rarest of hair colors:  Redhead  

And here is another good explanation: Red Hair Genetics

So in my family, there are a few "known redheads" from family history information, as well as the living ones.  We know, for example that my father's maternal grandfather (GWH on the scribbled chart below) and my mother's paternal grandmother (AMR) were redheads.  My maternal grandfather (JMP) was not a redhead, but his sister (V) was.  So redheaded  AMR must have had only rr genes to pass to her kids, JMP & V, but since V was a redhead, then V's father (AMR's husband) JMaP must have been Rr.  That means that at least one of  JMaP's parents had to have an r to pass along.  Confused?  Yeah, me too.  That is why drawings work.....

In order for a person to have redhair, they must inherit the recessive r gene from each of their parents giving them only rr.  So for a parent to pass on an r, they must be either Rr or rr.  IF the parent is rr, that parent is a redhead.

I'm not doing a good job explaining this!  Go read the web sites I linked to!

Anyway, even though my parents are not redheads, they have lots of redheaded descendants: 4 redheaded children, 4 redheaded grandchildren and (to date) 3 redheaded great-grandchildren.

Here is my poorly sketched chart, but hopefully it will make sense.  I only marked the people as Rr or rr where I could be sure of the genetics based on resulting hair color of parents or descendants.

So on my Dad's side, Dad is a carrier (Rr), his mom, TH, was a carrier (Rr).  I don't know about TH's mother, MM; she could have been RR or Rr.  But TH's father, GWH, is a known redhead, so he had to be rr.  And though I didn't mark it, that means GWH's parents, had to be at least each Rr, though since we don't know their hair color, one or both might have been rr.

On my Mom's side, neither my grandfather (JMP) or grandmother (GL) were redheads.  I don't know of any redheads on grandma's side, so can't deduce her genes.  But since grandpa's mother and sister were redheads and grandpa was not, we know his father (JMaP) must have been Rr, passing an R to grandpa, but passing an r to V.  Again, since we don't know the hair color of either of JMaP's parents, we don't know if either of them were redheads or if they were both 'carriers' each having Rr, but at least one of them must have had Rr.

I find it interesting enough that I code known redheads in my genealogy database hoping to keep sorting it out.

I'm sure I didn't do a very good job explaining, but I hope some of this made sense.