Rosharan Genetics, We're talking hair.

[The Rooster he/him]

What would the hair of a baby born of Adolin and Shallan look like.  Would it be black speckled with blonde AND red, or would the red overpower the blonde or vice-versa (As a redhead I think the red would beat our the blonde of course).  We haven't seen a description of a mixed Alethi having two alternate hair colors but it really seems that hair breeds true.  Would they have 50% red hair then like 45% black and 5% blonde?  Also Feather if you're reading this just replace Adolin  with Renarin  at will. 

Edited February 13, 2014 by AG Rooster

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

Not all the hair colors manifest by percentage. So far we only know about Alethi black hair and Iriali golden hair doing that.

Edited February 13, 2014 by PeterAhlstrom

[The Rooster he/him]

OK cool.  Thanks Peter.  It's a shame you've upgraded to Adonalsium from Broken One.  Broken one seemed so much more fitting with your tease-trolling.

 

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Not all the hair colors manifest by percentage. So far we only know about Alethi black hair and Iriali golden hair doing that.

 

Wait, does this mean Adolin and Renarin have Irali blood?  I remember reading them getting their blond hairs from their mother's side of the family (I think) but I don't remember the hair being described as actual gold like the Irali.  Or am I misinterpreting something?

[Aminar]

It doesn't necessarily mean they're rali. It sounds like Alethi hair comes through everything proportionally...

[DocHoliday he/him]

I'm frankly surprised Adolin had black and blonde hair. I've never heard of a person having that hair color/pattern.

To the best of my knowledge, black hair is a dominate trait; basically over ruling recessive traits like blonde and red hair.

 

You can get minor shades of red in brown hair people and blondes, producing auburn and strawberry blondes respectively.

But "faded black"? Never heard of it.

Even though it's probably incorrect, I imagined Adolin with prison stripes in his hair the whole time I read WoK.

 

Shadolin would realistically have mixed red hair and Alethi black.

[Awesomeness Summoned he/him]

To the best of my knowledge, black hair is a dominate trait; basically over ruling recessive traits like blonde and red hair.

You are correct. Black hair is a dominant trait and so, in normal earth human genetics, a mixture of black and blonde hair in the manner described for Adolin Is not possible. Fortunately Adolin isn't on earth and apparently they have different genetic markers for hair color than we do.

[FollowYourMuse she/her]

My guess is that genetically The Alethi hair genes are more similar to the genetics of patterning genes and dilution genes that affect horses, or Calico Cats, than how human hair genes work. 

 

Some of the patterning genetics would also work with the Parshmen/Parshendi Mottled skin.

[Bremen]

Calico cats are all female.  So I doubt thats whats going on with Adolin  (edit: maybe Renarin???)

 

In female mammals one of the X chromosomes is turned off randomly early in development.  All future cells inherit this trait.  However not all cells turn off the same X chromosome.  In humans this isn't very noticeable since few traits are X linked.  In cats coat color is X linked.  Thus each different splotch on a calico cat's coat is descended from a cell line that turned off a different X chromosome from its neighbors.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Bremen

[Awesomeness Summoned he/him]

My guess is that genetically The Alethi hair genes are more similar to the genetics of patterning genes and dilution genes that affect horses, or Calico Cats, than how human hair genes work.

Well, technically speaking, calico cats are (almost) always female. The pattern arises because the genes for color are on the X chromosome. During development the cells turn off one of the X chromosome but it is somewhat random so you get patches of cells with the white gene, patches with brown, and patches with a mix of the two. The only way the same effect would be happening with Adolin was if he had XXY phenotype which is rare and sadly mean he was likely sterile.

Edit: ninja'd by Bremen

Edited February 15, 2014 by awesomeness summoned

[FollowYourMuse she/her]

Well, technically speaking, calico cats are (almost) always female. The pattern arises because the genes for color are on the X chromosome. During development the cells turn off one of the X chromosome but it is somewhat random so you get patches of cells with the white gene, patches with brown, and patches with a mix of the two. The only way the same effect would be happening with Adolin was if he had XXY phenotype which is rare and sadly mean he was likely sterile.

Edit: ninja'd by Bremen

 

Yes I thought of that,  when I threw in Calico's.

 

I was more looking at the patterning genes in general. Horse coloration  fits in some ways too,  but I do not see any correlations for percentages in real world earth terms. 

[AerionBFII he/him]

i think it resembles eye colour as in the darker the colour the more dominant it is..no real proof just my opinion

[Oudeis he/him]

Dalinar's hair is described somewhere as pure black, yes? I feel like this is a thing that's true, though i cannot find a quote.

 

...Since Alethi hair is proportional, how can Adolin have hair that's mostly blond, with a few streaks of black? Wouldn't that require his mother to be like, 600% non-Alethi?

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Another curious fact is that Adolin and Renarin don't have the same ratio of Black to Blond, Renarin has more Black than Adolin.

[Pathfinder]

Maybe sometimes it skips a generation? Both my parents have black hair, yet when my brother and I were younger, we had blond hair like my grandmother's. As we got older, my hair darkened to brown and then almost black, while my brothers became a dirty blonde. So maybe Dalinar does have a mother or father with blonde hair, and it skipped his generation, till he married a woman with blonde hair and popped up more so in Adolin

[Oudeis he/him]

That makes Earth-genetics sense, but I don't think Rosharan-genetics sense.

 

The simplest explanation is that the variance is simply extreme, and Adolin takes a LOT after his mother. That seems to fly in the face of how often we're told it's a very proportional thing, however. Or Adolin is simply a mutant.

[Pathfinder]

That makes Earth-genetics sense, but I don't think Rosharan-genetics sense.

 

The simplest explanation is that the variance is simply extreme, and Adolin takes a LOT after his mother. That seems to fly in the face of how often we're told it's a very proportional thing, however. Or Adolin is simply a mutant.

Why wouldn't it make sense in Rosharan-genetics?

[Oudeis he/him]

While they admittedly have not mapped the Rosharan genome, they speak of alethi black hair breeding true, with percentage indicating purity of blood, in a way that makes such recessive genes unlikely. With a recessive gene as you described, half-Alethi children would most likely have full black hair, with successive generations having a chance to match up recessives into blond hair. Such a structure would never allow for hair of mixed color.

 

A non-alethi man, with an alethi wife, having children with full black hair who nevertheless might have children who are blond (or part-blond) is not only contrary to the sense we get of hair breeding true, let alone the Word of Peter we have on the topic, it also defies what we've empirically seen with children of mixed blood.

 

EDIT: I should take this moment to clarify; as I briefly touched upon in this post, the actual Rosharan people, let alone us, know so little about Rosharan genetics that almost anything is technically possible. The fact that it's so demonstrably different from Earth genetics means that, for the scenario you've described to happen, it would have to mean that Rosharan DNA mimics the same effects as Earth DNA with an entirely different underlying principle, which would surprise me greatly, personally. I also think it's contraindicated by what the Rosharans seem to think about hair.

 

All science in this post is per my friend, who is a genetics counselor.

Edited November 14, 2014 by Outis

[Knotai]

There are 2 explanations for this.

 

1. In Sanderson's world, each person has 92 (or some other multiple of 4) chromosomes. In this combination you would be able to have XXYY and XXXX combinations be male and female, respectively.

In females, 1 of the 2 X chromosomes (random) is not expressed in phenotype and becomes what is known as a Barr body. A male Barr body would enable Adolin to have both black and blonde hair.

This would also explain the four genders of Parshendi.

 

2. Hair is a codominant phenotype in Roshar, which would enable Adolin to inherit a dominant gene and recessive gene and still express both genes. For example, if black hair is dominant (H) and blonde recessive (h), Adolin's genotype would be Hh, which would correspond to mixed hair. I'm pretty sure Renarin has black hair--he would be HH, which means Adolin's mother must have had black and blonde hair. Just a hint when Dalinar goes looking for his wife.

 

Adolin is not XXY (Klinefelter syndrome). This would result in slightly feminine attributes and typically also includes some degree of mental disability. Adolin isn't the brightest chap, but he is arguably the most manly character in the novel.

[Oudeis he/him]

Except that there's not one "black and blond" hair type. Renarin has black hair with many blond streaks. Adolin has blond hair with a few black streaks. Laral, I believe, had black hair with a few blonde streaks. Others have had a variety of proportions of hair.

 

Also, since we know that the Listeners, like the Aimians, are a distinct non-human race (unlike the Natanatan or Azir, who are simply human with different physical markers), there's no reason to try to come up with a solution for why Adolin's genetic makeup could explain Listener genders.

 

...Hrm, except that we know the Horneaters and Herdazians have listener blood, meaning that listeners can interbreed with humans to produce viable offspring... which is both preposterously unlikely, yet would semantically mean they are the same race as humans. Given this, and the WoB that they are, in fact, a different race, I'm going to propose the theory that sometime in the past an Investiture is responsible for the successful cross-breeding; perhaps the Old Magic.

[Guest]

Hair and eye color inheritance are not simple. There are more than one gene responsible for such and there are no clear rules established, in our world that is. It is not always true a dark hair parents would bread a dark haired child or the "dark" always wins against the "light". I remember reading somewhere that pretty much any combination is possible even if some are highly improbable.

 

I have several real life example that follows this logic starting by my own children... I am dark haired and dark eyed whereas my husband is lighter with blue eyes. You would think my kids would turn out dark as the general preconception wants dark to win. However, as I said it is not as simple and the genetic of hair/eye color is more complex then one parent giving a dark gene and one parent giving a light gene. My kids both turned out being very blue eyed and whereas my daughter had light brown hair, my son is a red head. Yeah. Red. Where does the red come from? Somewhere down our grand-parents line, there were red heads.

 

What were the odds of both my children turning out the way they did? I dunno, but I was sure expending dark haired kids.

 

Another one of my friend is very blonde whereas her husband is very dark. Nobody living has light hair on his side of the family. Two kids out of three turns out very very blonde.......

 

Bottom line is, even in our world, the rules are not so clear.

 

Adolin specific case is one unlikely inheritance. His mother was golden haired. It has never been stated explicitly, but it was hinted. Dalinar made a trip to the West during his young years... It could be he then met a foreign woman with golden hair.... The odds were Dalinar and Shshshsh would most likely have dark haired children with a few blonde locks, if we follow Roshar hair color inheritance rules. Children like Renarin who is mostly black, but they had Adolin who is almost pure blonde. Not impossible, but not likely, much like me getting my kids or my friend.

 

As for Shallan and Adolin children, I have always considered Adolin has so little black hair, it may be removed from his blood line all together providing he marries a light haired women. I was thus always thought their kids would be a mix of golden and red locks in various proportions, with very very few black if none at all.

[Guest]

Except that there's not one "black and blond" hair type. Renarin has black hair with many blond streaks. Adolin has blond hair with a few black streaks.

 

Adolin does not have black streaks, but black single hair. Renarin is said to have blonde locks. For afar, Adolin probably looks blond all over (in fact he is always described as blond haired) whereas Renarin looks black, with blond locks as locks are larger then hair and would pop out, especially on black.

[Paragrin she/her]

I always headcanoned their kid as a Willshaper so he could be Yugi Moto.