Here's The Reason Why Some People Have Red Beards, But Brown Hair On Their Heads

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There is a category of person who are non-redheads but still go ahead to grow red beards. This is due to genetic mutation that determines a person's hair color.

Hair and skin color is determined genetically, and can be inherited from parents, grandparents, and ancestors. This increases the range of hair colors and color combinations that can be expressed on a person's body.

The precise shade of the color is determined by the amount of melanin in the hair. Melanin is a generic name for a group of natural pigment found in most organisms. It is responsible for giving the hair and skin, their color. The pigments exist to protect the skin from ultraviolet rays.  The type and amount of melanin is genetically determined.

"For white people the shades are dependent on two sorts of melanin: eumelanine (black pigment) and pheomelanine (red pigment)," Petra Haak-Bloem, specialist at the Dutch national genetic research center Erfocentrum says.

He added that hair cells of dark haired people only contain eumelanine, blondes have less eumelanine and redheads' hair contains mostly pheomelanine. How the types of melanin get distributed through the shaft of each hair and in what combinations is what determines the hair color which can vary by each individual follicle, according to Huffington post.

The mutation on the MC1R gene that appears on chromosome 16 in the DNA sequence causes a person to have a red beard with non-red head hair. The MC1R plays a key role in making a protein that helps in the production of the melanin that determines red hair.

A person may inherit two different types of MC1R gene, one from each parent, according to Haak-Bloem. The mutation of any of the MC1R genes could lead to having red hair in one place but not the other as the two different types of MC1R are producing hair color pigments in different ways.

This invariably means it is very normal for a person to have red beard hair and brown regular hair. It's one mutated MC1R gene expressing itself in one part of the body. A similar genetic principle explains why hair texture is different on different parts of the body, according to Insider.

A person might ask why it is only common to have dark hair and a red beard, and not red hair and a dark beard? And why it does not this happen with other color combinations?

Haak-Bloem said he was not sure. As far as genetic research goes, although it has not been researched much having a red beard is not linked to any deadly diseases.