If curly hair is genetic why do you have curly hair if none of your ancestors did?

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Answer

The answer to your question may lie in the way that hair-type genes are inherited.

First, a review of some basic genetics stuff. For most genes, you have two copies of each gene that you inherited from your mother and father. For most "traditional" genes, there is a dominant and recessive version. This all has to do with gene expression and phenotype, or what you actually end up looking like. If at least one dominant version of the gene is present, it will be expressed regardless of what the other is. The only way the recessive version will be expressed is if the dominant version isn't present. This holds true for some simple traits like whether earlobes are attached or not, where the free earlobe allele is dominant (noted as "E") and the attached (noted as "e")allele is recessive. So if at least one of your parents had free earlobes (Ee or EE), you'll have free earlobes.

So why don't you see your hair-type in your parents or grandparents? Well, hair-type doesn't follow the nice and simple pattern of inheritance. Hair-type follows a type of inheritance pattern known as "incomplete dominance". Like the earlobe gene, there are two versions of the hair-type gene, curly (noted as C) and straight (noted as s). The incomplete dominance refers to the fact that if you have one of each version of the gene, you get a mix of the two or, in this case, wavy hair. So for hair type, CC gives curly, Cs gives wavy and ss gives straight hair.

Without a better family history, all I can tell you is that it is possible that the curly version of the gene was carried by both of you parents as "Cs", or wavy-type. The same could also be true of your parents parents, but beyond that it gets really unlikely that "none of your ancestors" had curly-type hair. Of course, it's also possible that your curly hair might actually be wavy, or wavy-type. Outside the world of genes, wavy and curly are really just in the eye of the beholder.

Answer

I will start with saying, I myself have been cursed with curly hair. I have found that it seems like if you are female, you usually pick up the same/similar type of hair of your paternal grandmother. I don't know that this is proven anywhere, but with my family this is what shows true. All of my female cousins that were born to my father's brothers all have curly hair. And my female cousins that have straight hair were born to my aunts. Seems weird, but holds true in my situation. That's all I have to offer.

Answer

Somewhere along the line one of your family memebers has curly hair. I look white. But I had a tumor removed 3 years ago and it is only common in black women. Well through research I have found out that my great-grandma is black:)

Answer

Genetics in families goes back 100s of years, and you could be what they call a "throw-back." Simply meaning that a gene from a great-great-great grandfather/grandmother could well be in you. My husband comes from a family of 5 kids. He is the only one that is over 6 feet (6' 6" tall) with olive complextion and light blue eyes and a cleft in his chin. It always bothered him he looked so different from his other siblings. One day his aunt gave him a picture of his grandmother when she was very young and she was 6 feet, size 19" waist, light blue eyes and that cleft in her chin. He was rather proud of the whole fact. I am sure most of us have a lot of different races in our families if we research enough. I have Spanish and Indian in me, but it goes back some 350 years ago.

Marcy

ANSWER

well, actually i saw how like some of you are COMPLETELY wrong im in the sixth grade and also have blonde extremely curly hair and the is my science project u get ur hair from ur MOTHERNAL GRANDFATHER as in ur moms dad in my case he has thick hair and so do i!!!!

First answer by JaxonCo6. Last edit by Xoxome4everxoxo. Contributor trust: 1 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 28 [recommend question]