If a brown-eyed woman, and a blue-eyed man have a baby, ........?

Question

Is that child pre-dispositioned to carry the dominant (brown) gene and have brown eyes? Or is it possible for the child to inherit the recessive (blue) gene and have blue eyes?

Answer 1

I am an MD. Brown eyes are dominant. If the brown eyed parent is homozygous, meaning "purebred" for that allele meaning 2 copies of the brown gene, then all children born to that person will have brown eyes. If the brown eyed person is a heterozygote, meaning one brown eyed gene and one blue eyed gene, then there is a 50:50 chance that the blue eyed gene will be passed on, so if the other parent is blue eyed, there is a 50:50 chance that the child will have blue eyes. Actually it is slightly more complicated than this due to the phenomenon of "variable penetrance" but this is a good approximation. This allele is autosomal, meaning neither the sex of the parent nor the sex of the child has any bearing on the inheritance pattern.

Answer 2

If the mother already has the recessive blue gene (with a dominant brown; hence her brown eyes), then it is entirely possible (50% cance actually) that a chiold will have the recessive blue gene; and since the father can only give the recessive blue, the kid will then have blue eyes.

However, if the mother has two brown eye genes, then the child can only have one dominant brown and one recessive (from the father) blue gene, and will thus have brown eyes.

Answer 3

It is possible for the child to have blue eyes if the brown eyed parent carries the recessive blue eye gene. It is a simple Mendel Cross....If the brown eyed parent is (Bb) and the blue eyed parent is (bb) then it is actually a fifty fifty chance the child will have blue eyes.

Answer 4

It depends on if the brown eyed parent has a recessive blue-eyed gene. If this is the case than there is a 50/50 chance of the child having blue eyes (or green or hazel). But, if the brown eyed parent has only brown eyed genes than the child will have brown eyes.

Answer 5

It depends on the woman's genotype. If she carries two copies of the "brown" eye gene, then yes, the child will be brown eyed. If she carries one copy of the "brown" and one copy of the "blue" (which would still give her brown eyes), then there is a 50/50 chance that the child would have blue eyes.

Answer 6

Depends if the brown eyes woman is carrying both genes and only showing the dominant dark

if she is carrying both, then the child WILL carry the light gene and have a 50% chance of light eyes

if she is carrying only the dark eyes, the baby WILL have dark eyes and WILL carry both the light and dark gene

Answer 7

brown eyes are more likely to show up in your child than blue eyes. Blue eyes show up in children of brown-eyed people because genes for blue eyes are lurkers. These recessive genes stay in the background until a certain combination of genetic material occurs--ie a contibution of a recessive blue-eyed gene from each brown-eyed parents. It is more common
for brown-eyed parents to have blue-eyed children than for blue-eyed parents to have brown-eyed children. Or so I have been told

Answer 8

I can speak from experience. My wife has blue eyes and I have brown. I have a daughter with blue eyes and fair hair like my wife and a son who has brown hair and eyes like mine. If the woman has a family member who has blue eyes, such as a grandmother or great grandmother, it might even go back farther than that, it is possible to have a blue eyed child.

Answer 9

Yes it's possible for the baby to have blue eyes....my mother has brown eyes, my dad blue and I have blue eyes. It also depends on the grandparents genes I think.

Answer 10

There's a chance that the baby will have blue eyes. In my family, I have brown eyes like both of my parents, but my brother has blue eyes.