Shades of Human skin

Diversity of human appearance and form has intrigued biologists for centuries,
but nearly 100 years after the term genetics was coined by William Bateson in 1906,
the genes that underlie this diversity are an unsolved mystery. One of the most obvious
phenotypes that distinguish members of our species, differences in skin pigmentation, is
also one of the most enigmatic. There is a tremendous range of human skin color in
which variation can be correlated with climates, continents, and/or cultures, yet we know
very little about the underlying genetic architecture.
Historically, measurement of human skin color is often based on subjective
categories, e.g., moderate brown, rarely burns, tans very easily. More recently,
quantitative methods based on reflectance spectrophotometry have been applied, which
allow reddening caused by inflammation and increased hemoglobin to be distinguished
from darkening caused by increased melanin. Melanin itself is an organic polymer built
from oxidative tyrosine derivatives and comes in two types, a cysteine-rich redyellow
form known as pheomelanin and a less-soluble black--brown form known as
eumelanin.
Changes in the amount of each pigment produced is also under genetic control
and the ratio of eu- to pheo-melanin is responsible for variations in both skin and hair
colour. Thus the melanocytes of pale-skinned redheads produce lots of pheomelanin,
whilst those of people with a range of skin colours from beige to black and with hair
from blonde to brown to black produce more eumelanin than pheomelanin. Subtle
changes in this ratio account for the yellower or redder hue of Asians and Native
American Indians, respectively.
Melanin protects the skin from the harmful rays of sunlight, which is made up of
visible and invisible light. Invisible light, also called ultraviolet or UV light, can be
divided into UVA, B and C. It is UVA and UVB that cause damage to the skin, but
melanin protects the skin from damage by reflecting and absorbing some of the UV
energy. In the absence of melanin, UV energy penetrates deep into the skin where it
can cause small amounts of damage to the DNA in the nucleus of the still living
epidermal cells. Although small amounts of such damage can be spontaneously fixed by
the cells repair machinery, unrepaired, accumulated damage can cause cells to multiply
uncontrollably, resulting in skin cancers.
The amount of UV exposure over a life time, as well the shade of skin colour,
influence the chance of developing skin cancers. People with skins in which there is
little or no eumelanin, or which predominantly contain pheomelanin, are all at increased
risk of developing skin cancers. Thus people with albinism or very pale skin generally
suffer sun-burn easily without tanning when exposed to the sun and are at greatest risk.
It is not only the suns rays that damage the skin, sun beds used for salon and home
tanning are just as dangerous.

Polygenic inheritance can cause a trait to have continuous variation, which

means the characteristic does not have discrete forms and instead varies
gradually between two extremes.

Human traits that show continuous variation include weight, height and skin
colour.

In humans there are at least three genes coding for skin colour. Each skin colour
gene has two forms; one form codes for high levels of melanin production, and
the other form codes for low levels of melanin production.

Melanin is a brown coloured pigment that protects us from the suns harmful UV
rays. The more melanin you have, the darker, and better protected your skin will
be.

The skin colour genes are interesting because they exhibit incomplete
dominance. This means that a person who is heterozygous for all 3 skin colour
genes (Aa, Bb and Cc) has 3 units of pigment, whereas a person homozygous
for all 3 skin colour genes (AA, BB and CC) has 6 units of pigment.

The table below shows that there are seven shades of darkness in people, based
on genetics. In reality there are far more than seven skin colour shades due to
individual differences between people as well as environmental effects such as
sun tans.