With olive skin tone being a desirable characteristic, there is not a shortage of online queries trying to find out if olive skin is a dominant or recessive genetic trait.
In general, the olive skin tone is not a dominant or recessive skin tone. The genes that moderate skin tones operate at incomplete dominance, making it impossible for the Olive skin tone to be dominant or recessive. The main reason why olive skin maybe prevalent in others than the rest is that the Olive skin tone genetic traits depend on the melanin content in your skin and not recessiveness or dominance.
Generally, individuals with dark eyes and hair as well as tan or brown skin are more likely to have less melanin than others. On the other hand, individuals with blue eyes and blonde hair tend to have more melanin. The amount of melanin in your body is genetically determined. Also, melanin levels can change as a result of sun exposure.
As you know, the color of the skin and hair color are determined by two different genes. Genes determine your eye color too. But in the case of eye color, there are many more factors that influence it than just genes, e.g., environment, diet, etc.
Different genes determine if you have light or dark skin tone and your eye color. The main thing to remember is that there are no dominant or recessive genes for the olive skin tone because it depends on melanin content.
Even though it is not a dominant trait, people with olive skin tone do tend to be more related to people in the Mediterranean region (hence the term Mediterraneans). This might be another reason why this trait seems so common in these regions.
If you want to know what makes the olive skin tone so popular among fashion enthusiasts and models, here are some reasons:
With darker and pale shades of makeup used for styling up your olive complexion, you can create different looks every day.
With this olive skin tone, you can wear many different hair colors such as black, brown, blonde, red, and even blue or purple, which looks nice on your complexion.
Lean body types with tall height are generally found in people with olive skin tone. If you have a thin body type, then wearing dark clothes will make you appear even slimmer than other individuals.
Dominant And Recessive Genetics Explained.
Understanding dominant and recessive genetics is not a difficult task. Unlike some beliefs, it is actually very simple.
What Are Dominant And Recessive Genes?
Dominant and recessive genes are simply the ones that determine the genetic trait of an individual. The genes are inherited from both parent’s sides, and they are present in every human being.
How does It work?
Normally, a single gene out of two from each parent determines the genetic trait of an individual. For example, if both parents have brown eyes, then expect their children to develop brown eyes too.
But that is not always the case, in some cases, only one gene out of two from each parent determines whether you will be born with a blue eye or a brown eye. These are dominant traits as they are “overwritten” by other genes.
The same happens with recessive genes; there is no single gene but multiple ones on your DNA strand that needs to be in a certain order for it to work and be expressed as a phenotypical characteristic.
In this case, all the extra genes need to be present in order for the resulting phenotype (trait) to appear.
Each additional gene over the number needed to express a trait, lowers the probability of it being expressed. These are recessive genes, and everyone has them, but they won’t be inherited if there is no pairing with a dominant gene.
Why do They Matter?
Dominant and recessive genes matter because they both have their own advantages or disadvantages.
For example, Olive skin tone and brown eyes are dominant over blue eyes, so someone who inherits 2 copies (one from each parent) for the brown eye gene will develop brown eyes, whereas someone who gets only one copy for this gene will get olive skin tone and blue eyes.
It is easier to understand when we look at an example: A person with 3 copies out of two for brown eye gene that means he or she will develop brown eyes while a person with 1 copy will develop blue eyes.
The same happens with darker or paler skin tones: For example, if you have 3 copies of the gene that makes your skin darker, then you will have a dark skin tone while 1 copy will result in a pale skin tone.
The person who has 2 copies of this gene won’t look as tanned and brown compared to someone who might not even tan at all (those that tan naturally).
How Many Genes Do We Have?
Since there are many different genres out there and every human being is made up of about 20 to 25 thousand genes ((20-25K)) it can get difficult to understand how it works unless we are given an example that helps to relate better. Let’s take olive skin, since we are talking about it in this article.
In recent years, scientists have found 468 genes that determine whether you will develop olive skin tone or not. It means that even if both of your parents have a pale skin tone, there is still a small probability for them to give birth to a baby with an olive skin tone!
This happens due to the fact that the genes responsible for these characteristics inherit from either parent instead of only one, so they may come out dominant and be expressed on the child’s phenotype ((traits)).
People often confuse Olive complexion with having high levels of melanin but actually what determines someone’s skin tone is not just its amount but also its composition and the way it reacts to UV radiation.
So, you might have more melanin than someone else, but that doesn’t mean you will necessarily have a darker skin tone than him.
What does Olive Skin Tone Look Like?
An olive complexion is the tone of medium or dark olive green that looks like human skin color in some cases; it may be tanner since the genes for Olive Skin are dominant and express themselves without difference with those for tanning.
Some enzymes found inside your body convert this to a natural sunscreen that protects you from UV radiation; hence it is also known as an “adaptive trait”.
How can You Inherit Olive Skin?
As much as dark-skinned or light skin is adored other than fair skin, inheriting the genes is dependent on both parents being fair-skinned people. They might not even know they carry a recessive gene (the one responsible for Olive), but they do.
What is the Difference Between Olive Skin and Dark Skin?
The main difference between dark olive skin tones and dark skin tones (such as African American) is their richness in melanin, which makes some people with tan-colored skin types look very much like those with darker complexions such as black or brown.
Olive complexion ranges from medium tan to a more peachy color, whereas fair-skinned individuals are often seen with red or pinkish undertones and only in rare cases have greenish tints.
You might wonder what’s the difference between Redbone and Olive Skin since we also talk about it sometimes. Some might argue that it is just another name for olive skin tone, but actually, it is not.
Difference Between Redbone Vs Olive Skin
Even if it is wrongly used as a synonym for olive skin, redbone has more to do with your family’s roots and your own culture than this doesn’t apply to everyone.
Many people have red-colored or golden-toned brown skin who can be racially black, but they don’t directly connect to the Yoruba tribe in Africa.
Some people are part Hispanic and part Native American (Indian). They sometimes may develop an extremely tanned skin tone because their genes allow them to tan easily, just like someone else might get very pale from being exposed too much sunlight.
This is why many believe that redbone has more to do with ethnicity rather than skin tone.
Olive Skin Vs Dark Skins
Many times, even people with olive skin tones like Arab and Persian will be segregated or considered darker-skinned just because of their looks, but they might not actually be racially black!
That’s why it is very important to find out about your roots and where you come from in order to avoid making this mistake when discussing race, ethnicity or skin tone.
What Is A Dominant Gene?
A dominant gene determines a certain genetic trait of any person. These genes may also be known as ‘expressive’ or ‘homozygous’. Any offspring that has this gene, will have the same characteristics even if they come from parents with different traits
FOR EXAMPLE, when I talk about eye color, individuals with light-colored eyes (brown, green, blue, etc.) possess a dominant gene that makes their eyes lighter than those who don’t have it. When both parents have dominant genes, then there is more chance for their children
Conclusion:
There’s a lot more to skin tone than just black and white. In fact, the amount and type of melanin produced are controlled by many genes that operate under incomplete dominance.
One copy of each gene is inherited from each parent, which means there are many alleles for these different types of genes. This leads to incredible variety in human skin tones!
I hope this article was helpful and that you liked it. I have other articles related to olive skin and the difference between redbone and olive skin and understand what “olive complexion” means. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them below! I would really appreciate it!
