Mark's Notebook


	And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order to the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. - Soren Kierkegaard

Gene variants make women see red

Reuters

Monday 27 February 2006, 7:15 pm
Keywords: Health Topics

By Amy Norton

A new gene study may help explain why she sees crimson, vermillion and tomato, but it's all just red to him.

In an analysis of the DNA of 236 men from around the globe, researchers found that the gene that allows people to see the color red comes in an unusually high number of variations. And that may be a boon to women's color perception in particular, study co-author Dr. Brian C. Verrelli told Reuters Health.

That's because the gene, known as OPN1LW, sits on the X sex chromosome. Women have two X chromosomes, one from each parent, while men have one X and one Y chromosome. Because women have two different copies of the "red" gene, the fact that the gene can have so many variations means it may especially aid women's perception of the red-orange spectrum.

Past research into color-vision genes has focused largely on variations related to color blindness. The red gene routinely swaps bits of genetic material with its neighbor on the X chromosome, the "green" gene. Sometimes this exchange goes wrong and results in a defect that causes color blindness. An estimated eight percent of men are color-blind, while few women have the condition because the odds are they will have at least one good copy of the red and green genes.

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Mark's Notebook

Gene variants make women see red

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