Males mature 18 to 60 have been hit by an epidemic of beard grow over the past two years or so . Experts haveunderestimated how long it will continueto craze , although if current trend go along , all new urban medium professional will be affected by 2017 ( probably ) .

As more guys jump onto the haired bandwagon , you ’ve probably asked yourself , why are so many whiskers ginger even if their hair is coloured ? Even if they do n’t have a Melanerpes erythrocephalus in the family ?

Perplexed by the interrogation , Adriaan Schiphorst fromMotherboardcalled up Petra Haak - Bloem fromErfocentrum , a Dutch organisation that promotes genetics and cognizance of genetic disorder , to get the answers .

She narrate him it ’s all down to   the MC1R - cistron . The   gene coding for hair vividness is called   " incomplete predominant hereditary traits , " meaning   hair color is n’t as simple as one gene coding for one color of hair . The genes can be evince otherwise in dissimilar area of your body , like your head , beard , eyebrow or pubes .

Haak - Bloem excuse that it ’s all to do with the factor that   computer code for the amount of unlike pigment , called melanin , in your tomentum . She explained that haircloth color is dependent on two of these pigments : eumelanin , the ignominious paint , and pheomelanin , a red pigment .

She added : “ More than a ten ago , researcher discovered that one gene ( MC1R ) on chromosome 16 plays an important part in giving people cherry whisker . MC1R ’s task is making a protein called melanocortin 1 . That protein plays an important part in converting pheolmelanine into eumelanine .

“ When someone inherits two mutated versions of the MC1R - gene ( one from each parent ) , less pheomelanine is converted into eumelanine . The [ pheomelanine ] accumulates in the paint cell and the person ends up with violent hair and fair skin . ”

Haak - Bloem also suppose that if you only inherited one of these mutated genes , red hair can seem in sporadic place because of the diverseness of ways the cistron can be express .

So , there you have it . That left over ginger beard in your kinfolk is n’t just the Cartesian product of   adulterous bodily process with a crimson - locked lothario .

image credit : WordShore / Flickr .   ( CC BY - NC - ND 2.0 )