TheBiologySpace.BioBlog

Wouldn’t it be more common in the same family. Like a family with blonds has alot of blonds, Wouldn’t it be more likely for the phenotypes to come up multipul times in the same family?

Well since twins are said to skip a generation a parent is more likely to have twins. however the fact that they’re faternal doesn’t make the black and white twins that suprising. its two different embryo’s with two different sperm.

i’m still confused on polygenes. does that mean that the skin color should have been mixed or not? because it seems like skin tones would have been linked somehow.

I think they should try and see if they can make one more set of different colored twins. If they do end up making one more then they should keep going until the cycle is broken.

This is a dumb question but when i says the father is dark skinned, does it mean he is fully black? Or does it mean he’s half black, or does it mean he’s a different race but dark? (For instance white but just very dark)

This is and interesting story of genetics. About independent assortment, this truly exhibits Mendel’s laws. Each gene for skin and hair, etc. are clearly not linked therefore producing the varying children. Giving birth to fraternal twins exhibiting extensively different skin colors is a lot of luck according to me. Race is just what your predominant skin color and background are. It is indefinite. The same can be said about mixed children. The predominant phenotype would determine this. Still the sets of twins could be grouped in the same race. All up to the person perceiving it.

I think it is even odder that all four children are girls when there should be a 1:1 ratio. This is another example of random selection in mendelian genetics which results in a probability and not an actuality.

This is amazing and bizarre cause like already said this doesn’t happen but very little. If I were the parents of these children I would be like super excited.

Independent Assortment is alleles segregating independently of each other. In this case each of the alleles that control outward appearance where identical to the other, making the twins. Making it even more interesting is that this occured twice making two sets of fraternal twins.

That is quite astounding. There must a genetic link to their ancestors, upon which they had black and white relatives.

The couple had a higher chance of having black and white fraternal twins because they probably had ancestors on both sides of the family which had this specific phenotype. There was an accumulation of the polygenes, thus resulted in the specific phenotypes of the twins.

This is astonishing, yes it’s clearly an example of Mendel’s laws but you almost never see this, especially twice in a row! It does pose some interesting questions; I would like to see a picture of the parents so I can better understand.

This is mind boggling. I wonder what the girls think when looking at the family, or what others think. I agree that the more interesting question is how they are all girls, and not one is a boy. If you look at the faces of the children they look almost identical except for the obvious skin and hair colors. Do the four children have the same colored eyes?

I wonder if the two girls can marry opposite colors and carry this down. It just is a very interesting story and i would like to see what we can learn about it.

I know that this is a wonder for most scientists, but shouldnt we be seeing more of this? Our genetics havent really changed or havent really been abnormal like this due to interatial couples. Many just have mixed children and thats it, but could this be a change that will start happening all over the world?

I wonder if these two couples will be brought in to be tested on. I mean we arent talking about like laboratory crazy scientist tests, but what if they are called in to look at their DNA. Maybe the scientists will find something interesting.

I agree with Paul except for the part about the twins being grouped in the same race, depending on your own perception. If they weren’t fraternal twins, then yeah that would probably be true. But since they are fraternal, it’s more likely that they are considered different race since the embryos were separate

The aspect of race in the twins’ case is a matter of perspective. Skin color typically determines race, along with several other contributing factors, based on a person’s geographical origin. But along with race comes ethnicity; a person’s background. These children with grow up neither black nor white. Their skin colors may be from different races, but their ethnicities will be the same: they were born of the same parents, raised in the same home, speak the same language, and learn the same cultural customs.

Thats really strange that incomplete dominance doesn’t occur in humans that often. To think that 1 out of half a million births that this can occur, but on top of that for it to happen twice is an astronomical possibility now that I think about it. That’s pretty cool.

Well, I think this is incredible. I’ve never seen offspring of an interracial couple exhibit two of the different phenotypes of both parents. I think maybe the mother has some ancestors that were previously African to cause this anomaly.

Well after reading this statistic, my assumption was true on how remarkable this fact of two sets of fraternal twins that are both black and white. I think that the ancestry of both the father and mother had a very diverse groups of ethnic cultures and races including Caucasians and Africans.

Well obviously the trait for skin color won’t just exhibit incomplete dominance due to a interracial couple. I just think genetic inheritance for traits is random with the DNA that is given from the parents. It is kind of interesting to see that the more polygenes that are present, the stronger the specific phenotype shows in this particular case.

I find this article to be perplexing yet enlightening. Mendel’s laws basically tell us that a parent can only give one allele or trait for one gamete I believe….one parent can not give two. Basically, this couple was able to produce two sets of offsprings with two different skin colors because of, in my opinion, ancestry of both parents which most likely consisted of several Caucasian and African traits, and etc. The Spooner-Durrant children basically shows the concept that we really don’t know how race is determined, but in the general sense we base it on their skin color or parental ethnic background. However, for the Spooner-Durrant children, the mother and father is Caucasian and African, respectively, but two children look Caucasian, while the other two look African. It is really confusing in this case because technically, they have Caucasian and African qualities that makes who they are. I think it is ultimately how society chooses what race a person is due to their skin color.

The idea that we learned basically through out this whole year in this class is fundamentally that we don’t know half of what is going on in our world and how it specifically works. That is why we use science as a tool of investigation and exploration to figure out the special events such as these two sets of fraternal twins with different skin colors. These are the things that drive the mankind’s ultimate desire to know and break down the question of “Why?”
which enables us to further push the envelope and the boundary of what we know about genetics, evolution, physics, or any subject for that matter, but this article highlights that the mystery of knowledge in this world is still both alluring and evasive.

haha i like how glenn-eric said “even odder”…
ironic ayy?
like math… even, odd… even odder…
okay anyways…

I do agree with alan on this one though… i gots to see the parents in order to truly grasp this phenomena…
But honestly this doesn’t change my perspective of race whatsoever.
For we are all of one single race: human

And last time i checked these 4 girls are human…
game, match, set point, deuce

Of course we all know that fraternal twins are dizygotic and usually occur when two fertilized eggs are implanted in the uterine wall at the same time. But for all we know there could have been some sort of mutation in the genes which may have caused certain genes to be expressed in one of the twins and not in the other… Other than that i really don’t have a clue…
Maybe I should get my…………
Handy Dandy…….
NOTEBOOK!

Another assumption i have is that maybe this is just how the 2 newly born twins look at a young age.
Maybe when they come of age – around 5 years old – their true skin color will mature and be expressed.
Im just throwing out ideas here.
Somebody throw me a bone please.

Yeah, I agree with Katie. How do you explain to those kids why they look different than each other and their parents?

I think we should watch for these kids until it’s time for them to have kids and see if they can have another set of different colored twins. That would be even crazier.

I think, as the world becomes more easily accesable by its inhabitance the boundaries that determine races of people will blur out and become less visible.

This completely makes me do a double take on how little we know about genetics. I wonder if the mother and father have recessive genes to a skin type. It also makes me wonder if one of the babies will have red hair to reflect the mother’s hair color.

This will be hard for the parents to explain to their children when they are older. Especially since they are twins. It will be interesting to see if they are treated differently than their twin because of race, and it could bring up good topics for family discussion.

I think the only way this could have occured is if both sides of the family had colored and non-colored family. That way, the polygenes could have added to produce this specific phenotype. Otherwise, there would have been a typical mixed race set of kids.

This just shows how you can never pigeon-hole these sorts of things. I guess the most important question to ask is why incomplete dominance doesn’t occur here, but occurs in other children. Is this solely the work of polygenes?

Race has always been based on various heritable traits. To some, race is determined by skin color, while others take hair texture into consideration. It is up to people to decide how they define it.

Would people, then, categorize both sets of twins in the same race? If skin color was the determinant for race, then they would obviously not belong to the same race. Would having the same parents be enough to offset their different skin colors in order to still be considered of the same race?

How rare! But rarities are bound to happen, as they are rare, not impossible. The chances are small, but it never happening might be even rarer.

I wonder what it’s going to be like, when the fpur girls are older, and they tell people that their sisters.
People will probably think they’re kidding.

The Spooner-Durrant family relates to independent assortment (the independent assortment of alleles (and their chromosomes), in which the process is independent because the migration of homologues within one pair of homologous chromosomes to opposite poles does not influence the migration of homologues of other homologous pairs) by the fact that the skin color didn’t affect other phenotypes such as eye color or eye color. It is possible that the mother was able to give birth to a set of ferternal twins that are essentially different skin colors is because ferternal twins are two eggs that are fertalized, each zygote having different varience of phenotypes. They are not identical, it could be the same out come if they were not twins, except in this case they are born at the same time.

We are all apart of the human race!

forget skin color and ethnic background…
my ethnic background is earth!

i win

Wow this is AMAZING. Mary-Kate and Ashley move out of the way! Haha ok so anywaysss….

Independent assortment may definitely play a large role in this biological phenomena. According to Mendel’s second law, alleles of different genes assort independently of each other, suggesting no relation among the different traits. This apparent randominization seems to ultimately define the contrasting appearance of both sets of twins. The fact that you are even born is random within itself.

This is such an amazing story!!! It’s even more astounding that this event has occurred twice in the same family!! And I completely agree with the suggestions that we should wait to see what their children would be like and if they continued to have this amazing event. It would be so fascinating to see if there is something in their DNA which allowed them to have such interesting and wonderful girls.

Skin color and physical appearance do play a small part in determining race, but I think that it eventually all comes down to one’s ethnic background and their ancestry. Where one comes from is vital as it links you to who you are today. Race seems to be a difficult concept; it’s all about how you percieve it to be.

I must disagree with the notion that the girls look almost identical. The child with the caucasian coloring, has a much wider jaw line with rounded cheek. Her eyes are more almond shape and her nose is turned downward. The girl to the left, though, has a flattened bridge between her eyebrows (kind of Native American like), but her nose is turned up. Her face is more diamond shape and her brow line is much lower. It’s like their coloration is completely different and so it their facial features. But neither face shows and prevalence to either race. That’s so odd. It’s not even a clear mix.

This occurrence is rare and exciting. It is very interesting that they had two sets of twins that were both girls and both different color skin. Being the fact that they are fraternal twins I can see how they look different. I never would have guessed that they have two different skin colors though.

This goes to show how little we do know about genetics. Wouldn’t one expect to find a fair-skinned (tan) child rather than fraternal twins one dark skinned and one light skinned? This makes me wonder whether or not we will be able to decipher DNA to its fullest and whether or not our technology will be so far advanced so we can pick out certain genes and pick that gene for our children if we so choose (i.e. hair color, skin color, and much more).

It makes sense that many sets of genes control skin color: the amount of melanin present in skin is affected by many factors, some gene related, some not. People’s ancestors who lived in the sun developed a “natural defense” against the sun by developing more melanin in their skin, while people who had to take shelter indoors against the cold had less melanin present. The amount of time people spend outdoors, especially when younger, affects skin color as well: the longer you are outside, the darker your skin gets as protection from the sun’s harmful rays.

This story is truly an incredible addition to the science and study behind twins. The chance that this kind of incident occurs to familes 1 in 500,000 times is basis enough for increased testing and studies.

This type of uniqueness can show a new path of genetics and the relationship between twins. Twins, essentially, are the perfect replica of each other, short of cloning. The fact that each twin is a different color shows a sign of co-dominance in colors. I can’t recall the name of the horse that does this, but its the one that has both red and white hairs that are not mixed but are red and white in separate hairs. In this way the horse can be seen as a fusion of a red and a white horse. When you split this fusion you can be returned with a full white horse and a full red horse. The same view can be seen with these twins. The fact that this miracle has happened, let alone twice shows that this family has a whole lot of favor on their odds; next thing we know, they’ll win the lottery.

Race is commonly attatched to a person by their skin color and so this case brings up a startling point. The kids come from the same parents but are of different skin colors so even though society may classify them based on their skin colors, they shouldn’t have to be succeptible to that kind of classification.

There are stranger things than this that can happen to new born. These were probably just fraternal twins that developed as there DNA indicated it should. If these had been identical twins then it would be much more interesting. Things like chimeras and stuff are cooler.

First off, as far as heredity is concerned, I believe race is determined by the parents’ backgrounds so the girls would be mixed whether they looked like it or not. I’m pretty sure there’s even a ”Mixed” bubble for Race/Ethnicity on test documents, right?
I agree that since they are fraternal and not identical, it is possible that the two eggs that were fertilized happened to have different hair/skin color genes-just the luck of the draw. It’s still amazing to see it happen twice in a row though!

haha even odder should be a correct term and furthermore I think the fact that the children are twins and have different skin colors is amazing, usually twins still look somewhat similar even if they are fraternal.

This is a great example of Mendel’s law of independent assortment because it shows there can be variations in race,skin color, and hair type. Since each parent was half black and half white they were able to combine their genes to produce two sets of twins each having one being black and white. This totally changes my perspective on race because if two “halves” can make a whole this can change human race.

I just did the math (with my computer calculator), and the probability of this happening has exactly a 0.0000000004% chance of happening. That this low, low number actually happened is astounding! It’s like winning the lottery a bajillion times in a row! Okay, maybe the probability of winning the lottery is significantly lower, but you know what I mean.

The probability of this phenomenon is quite remarkable. I wonder has this kind of incident ever happened in another country or down in history. If not then this would definitely lead to research that might lead to more biological discoveries.

I honestly don’t understand how this is possible. Has someone looked at a family tree in order to determine the races of their ancestors? It would be interesting to see the racial backgrounds of their relatives. This may help in developing a conclusion.

This is incredible! For a family to have a set of twin is pretty cool…but two sets is even more amazing – but on top of that, the fact that one has a different skin color than the other in both sets is mind boggling! It’s so weird how they could be twins – let alone siblings, since usually siblings look more related to each other than these twins. I would really like to see what their parents look like.

With this case, it is clearer how diverse we as humans really are. The mere fact that such a person of a completely different race can be born to parents of yet another race is evidence. We are all carry characteristics of others with us and soon we will all begin to accept these differences as they are evident in every human to begin with.

As astounding as this is, my first thought was about how difficult their lives will probably be. As much as we like to think that racism is a thing of the past, the reality is different. They will probably have to endure lots of jokes about ‘mommy and the milk man’ (even though I don’t think anywhere has milk men anymore, and that is of course ridiculous since they are twins). Still, there are plenty of people who do not have that mind set, and the thing about twins is that you always have each other. Even if you want to get away from each other.

This is the most incredible thing i have ever seen, it truly astonishes me that this could happen, TWICE!!!. TO THE SAME PEOPLE. It truly shows us how incredible this world is. And how little we really now about the world around us.

The probability of this occurance is very low!
However, would this probability increase over time since the number of mixed-race couples is increasing?

That’s pretty crazy how a phenomenon that rare occured twice for the same couple. But along the lines of what Kierra said, it shouldn’t be that surprising. If you really think about it, if skin color is determined by the number of polygenes present, then it would make sense that both ends of the spectrum as well as all shades inbetween are plausible. I think the reason people are so amazed by the event is purely because we typically assume that a child of mixed race will have skin of mixed color.

Race is too often determined by someones physical appearance and not by their backround. And why are we so quick to categorize these kids anyways? Does it matter?.. At all?

that’s pretty intriguing stuff. both fraternal and half dark skinned and half light skinned. ha! it’s brilliant!

incredible, but maybe it really is just a coincidence. just because an extremely unlikely occurrence occurs in nature, it doesnt exactly mean we’ve been thinking or studying the wrong thing all this time

This family is overall, freaking amazing….they have 4 girls, as previously stated by someone. They have 2 sets of twins, in a row. AND, the fact that each set of twins has one black and one white child, now that is astonishing…maybe biologists should investigate the parents’ sex cells to determine whether or not that possess some kind of compatible genes that link up in order to make this phenomenon more likely to occur…

It seems like the girl’s skin color came from a strange, rare combination of their Grandparent’s genes.

Because the girls are fraternal twins, they were two seperate eggs fertilized by different sperm. That way it is possible to pass the complex combination of skin tone genes from their grandparents, and not necessarily their parents.

I think that race has become an issue for the past decades, and is becoming a word that will soon become meaningless in the future. We are all people, with the same build in body, and we have differences, but internally we are the same. Race is a word that has seperated people through the centuries and has created wars and many deaths, when all the word does is define others based on apperance. Race drove people apart, but now with these children for example, it brings them closer. These children are astounding and are essentially a somewhat groundbreaking in the genetics field and defining race itself. For this to happen once is cool, but twice is crazy. I agree with some above students, it will be awesome to actually get to bubbble other and not just caucasian.

When I was growning up, I had a friend who was mixed and she had the strangest hair. One lock would be a bright blond, like her white moms, and the next lock would be a dark brown coming from her african side, this countined though out all of her hair. It waslike this naturally, the really odd thing though wasn’t the color, it was the texture of her hair, the blond sections were very fine and stright, while the brown sections were much corser and curlyer. I always wondered about her odd hair,and it is kinda of annoying to know I will never really be sure of what caused it. Such is genetics though, if we could find everything out right away, then we would already know everything, and science might not be so interesting a subject.

These girls are very interesting and I would love to know how the mixing of races came out in twins two times in a row, but I will live not knowing the anwser. I think that we should accept that nature has a few interesting times and genetic miracles or mistakes and move on. These girls, all four of them, have a great life to lead now, it maybe a tad difficult but let them live it. There is no benefit knowing how this phenomen occured.

I completely agree with Daniel, it suggests that we have only touched the tip of the grandeur of the iceberg of genetics. And for this genetic anomaly to happen twice, it is incredible. I wonder if maybe any of the twins had certain genetic markers or if this hasnt happened anywhere else in their ancestral tree? Maybe there is some evidence such as the caucasian mother has ancestors who were darker skinned? The reasons as to why this occured are baffling, and even more so what the future could hold? Is this something new, maybe an evolution of genetic material, or an ancient mutation that had been lost and buried in secret, inactive until now? Maybe caused by environmental or atmospheric changes? who knows? :]

After watching the journey of man, it seems that the darker skin is still programmed into our genetic code. It was still probable to surface in these circumstances. What I don’t understand is the way the lighter skin children came about. It also seems reasonable that the dark skin is a dominant trait.

Everyone has had very good points. Race has become such a factor in life when really the color of someone’s skin doesn’t affect their personality at all. When you are looking for people to be with isn’t that all that matters? Yes for some things race can be helpful such as scholarships and different opportunities based on race but honestly no one should judge based on those circumstances. These children will be an interesting test to people and how they treat people of different colors. They will always be able to identify with their twin though and will have someone of their same skin color to go as well.

Perhaps one or both of them has a mutation that causes such a phenomenon. They should try having another to see if they can produce the same results.