Scientists reveal why non-readheads grow ginger beards
SCIENTISTS have worked out how people without ginger hair mysteriously end up growing ginger beards.
It turns out you don't even need to have a single redhead in your family to develop glorious red facial fuzz.
To have ginger hair, a person needs two copies of the same gene — one from both of their parents.
But to get a ginger beard, a person only needs one copy of that gene.
That means that if either parent has the gene — even if the parents themselves don't have red hair — their child could end up getting the lighter ginger bristles in their facial hair.
The trait can even be passed down several generations without being expressed before unexpectedly surfacing.
ANCIENT ROOTS
Petra Haak-Bloem from Erfocentrum, the Dutch national information centre for genetics, explained how hereditary traits have their roots way further back than a single generation.
She previously told : "Generally speaking, people inherit hair colour not only from their parents, but also from their grandparents and earlier ancestors.
"The genes that determine hair colour are so-called 'incompatible dominant hereditary traits'.
"This means that there isn't one single gene that's dominant over the rest, but all genes influence each other.
"So it's entirely possible that one distant ancestor had a hair colour that suddenly appears again though a certain combination of genes — though that can be quite unexpected for parents."
The two pigments that control hair colour are called eumelanin, which is black, and pheomelanin, which is red.
People with darker hair have the black pigment, while blondes have less black pigment and redheads only have red pigments.
GENETIC DETERMINATION
The pigments are controlled by genetics — but head hair and facial hair are determined by different genes.
Scientists have worked out that when a non-redhead has a ginger beard, it's because they have a mutated version of a gene called MC1R.
MORE IN SUN MEN
It makes a protein which turns the red hair pigment into the black pigment.
So when someone has two mutated versions of MCR1, one from each parent, less red pigment is converted.
This allows it to build up, resulting in a person with ginger hair and fair skin.
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