All Blue-Eyed People Have This One Thing In Common

Recently, a gene has been identified that causes blue eyes, and it’s called HERC2.

This gene switches off OCA2 – which results in different shades of brown eyes – and determines the amount of brown pigment melanin we make.

Professor Hans Eiberg, from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, explains: “Originally, we all had brown eyes. But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch’, which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes.”

The majority of the population has brown eyes. Credit: Alamy

It is believed to have originally begun when humans first migrated from Africa to Europe, The Independent details.

The University of Copenhagen study suggests that all blue-eyed people are descendants of one person.

Although it remains a mystery who first started this initial mutant gene, the fact every blue-eyed person has this mutation is pretty compelling evidence.

Professor Eiberg says in the report that the research into the genetic mutation of people with blue eyes ‘simply shows that nature is constantly shuffling the human genome, creating a genetic cocktail of human chromosomes and trying out different changes as it does so’.