Melanesian Peoples Origins

Origin of the blond Afro in Melanesia | Science

Visiting the Solomon Islands of Melanesia, 1800 kilometres north-east of Australia, you will see a marked contrast: about 10% of the dark-skinned island inhabitants have a light blonde Afro. The hypothesis about the origin of this gold colour is that it is bleached by salt water and exposure to the sea, a food full of natural resources and the European or American heritages.

However, a new finger trial held a chance alteration, indicating that blonde haired locks of haired blonde at least twice in the annals of mankind. The colour of people' s algae is a characteristic that is usually determined by many different genetic groups, but Sean Myles, a researcher at Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro, Canada, suggested that things could be easier in the Solomon Islands because he saw almost no differences in the shade of blonde sheen.

You''ve either had blonde or not,' says my lady. In order to look for an original genetically engineered plan, he and his co-workers gathered salivary and fur specimens from 1209 Solomon Islanders. 2. Colony genetics usually compared tens of thousand specimens, but the scientists forecast that they could find discrepancies in a much smaller specimen due to the strong contrasts between the blonde and black sluices of the islander.

Comparing the genomes of 43 blonde and 42 dark-haired islander. Both groups, they found, had different version of a key genes, one that encoded a molecule responsible for pigments. Changing a "letter" of the DNA codes - to replace a "C" with a "T" - means the distinction between black and blonde hairdry.

Similar mutations produce blonde females by decreasing the amount of molanine in their males. Blonde Solomon Islanders are carrying two replicas of this mutated GM, which is present in 26% of the islanders, the crew will be reporting in tomorrow's Scient. Blondes are inherited from both parties.

Scientists did not find the mutations in 941 specimens of 941 specimens from 52 other communities around the globe, as well as in Europe. "It is a great example of a convergence process in which the same result is achieved by totally different means," says Mr Milles. It is unlikely that the change, which has no apparent benefits, occurred by accident in one person and drove to a high rate in the Solomon Islands because the initial populace was small, says Jonathan Friedlaender, an Anthropologe Emeritus at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who was not part of the group.

"The whole area seems to have been inhabited by very small groups of humans who made it across these springboard isles, so you have very drastic consequences on the variations in transcription. "The results, says Mr Milles, help to unravel a Eurocentric worldview by reflecting on where blonde is from.

"When you find a blonde and blonde coat that is found in Melanesia and nowhere else," says Melanesiasmyles, "there is no explanation why such hair pigments do not live in under-represented communities around the globe and influence not only copigmentation but also disease-related characteristics. "I think it's a very sound study," says Rasmus Nielsen, populace genetics expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

"We spend million and million and million bucks to find out a little more about the genetics behind some of the characteristics that have already been researched in Europe," he says.