http://patdollard.com/2008/12/woman-gives-birth-to-second-set-of-black-and-white-twins/ The War Starts Here Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:08:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://patdollard.com/2008/12/woman-gives-birth-to-second-set-of-black-and-white-twins/#comment-740412 Mike Crichton Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:26:43 +0000 http://patdollard.com/2008/12/woman-gives-birth-to-second-set-of-black-and-white-twins/#comment-740412 The odds aren't all that ludicrous. just looking at the father, it's obvious he has significant caucasian ancestry. There are 8 genes known to affect skin color. Assuming the mother was homozygous for all of them, and the father heterozygous, the odds that any one child would get all of the "light" alleles is only about 2000-1. In both cases, the darker skinned twin still had the intermediate skin tone you'd normally expect, so they don't figure into this equation. for 2 out of 4 children to have all light alleles, the odds are only about 400,000-1. The odds aren’t all that ludicrous. just looking at the father, it’s obvious he has significant caucasian ancestry. There are 8 genes known to affect skin color. Assuming the mother was homozygous for all of them, and the father heterozygous, the odds that any one child would get all of the “light” alleles is only about 2000-1. In both cases, the darker skinned twin still had the intermediate skin tone you’d normally expect, so they don’t figure into this equation. for 2 out of 4 children to have all light alleles, the odds are only about 400,000-1.

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