Today I will share with you a rather curious fact, which caught my attention. In the Solomon Islands, an island country in Oceania, in traditional Melanesian melanesia, some of its inhabitants are often well known for their appearance, as they have dark skin and platinum-coloured hair, like that of a Nordic man. The Melanesians look amazing, their skin is the darkest in humans, and many of them are born with shiny blond hair, which is extremely sensational.
10% of this population is born with this aspect, until now the reason for this peculiar appearance was unknown, many believed that it was the mixture of races, which was perhaps a trait transmitted by European traders visiting the islands in the current centuries, but research revealed the mystery. It is a genetic variant, unique, has nothing to do with the gene that causes light color in your hair. Worldwide, blond hair is rare.
Scientists at the Center for Causal Analysis in Epidemiology and Stanford University School of Medicine (USA) took samples from a group of native Melanesian, 43 with blond hair and 42 with dark hair and performed a genetic analysis to compare their genomes.
It was not easy to get the samples, as Solomon Islands is underdeveloped, there are no roads, no electricity, no telephones, and it is one of the most linguistically diverse nations in the world, with dozens of languages spoken. The natives were asked to spit in laboratory tubes to obtain the DNA sample.
In conducting the experiment they realized that there was only one very strong signal on chromosome 9, which represents 50% of the variation in hair color of the Melanesians. The team of researchers discovered the responsible gene, called TYRP1, which encodes a protein related to tyrosinase, an enzyme that is well known to influence pigmentation in mice and humans.
This means that the characteristic they represent originated uniquely and independently.
Unbelievable, but they are an extremely fascinating population, they have different languages, their appearance is very striking, their skin tone contrasts perfectly with the color of their hair, and they have everything in their genes.
