Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Human pigmentation -- MC1R phenotypic variation

This article discusses the correlation of two SNPs upstream from the MC1R pigmentation gene with different spectra of pigmentation in human eye, hair, and skin color.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.22301/full

It is a nice example of the role of regulatory evolution in the expression of diverse phenotypic characters and highlights the influence of ecological and environmental factors on genetic processes of adaptive variation. These findings also have interesting implications for anthropology and forensics.

No comments:

Post a Comment