奇闻:双胞胎肤色竟一黑一白

Kaydon and Layton Wood are just five yet already they are local celebrities. In fact, the twins have been making headlines in regional newspapers since they were born – because one is white and the other black.

Kaydon 和Layton Wood仅仅只有五岁，但是他们已经是当地的名人了。实际上，这对双胞胎一出生就出现在在地区资讯头条，因为他们的一个是白皮肤，一个却是黑皮肤。

Each year, 12,000 sets of twins are born in Britain. Of these, 385 of them are black or mixed race, but those like Kaydon and Layton are rare.

英国每年有12000对双胞胎出生，其中385对是黑色或混血种族。但是像Kaydon 和Layton Wood这样的非常稀少.

Dr Jim Wilson, a population geneticist at the University of Edinburgh, explains: “Since parents contribute 50 per cent of the genes each to an off­­­­spring, the first generation born to a mixed-race couple will definitely be midway in colour between the two. But second-generation children are different. If one of the offspring marries a white person, it is possible for them to have a white child. It is not certain actually. One child in ten is now mixed race, which potentially means black and white twins will become far more common. ”

爱丁堡大学人口遗传学家Jim Wilson博士解释说：“父母对后代各占50%的遗传基因，第一代混血儿在肤色上肯定会中和父母双方的肤色。但第二代混血儿就不同了。如果第一代混血儿和白种人结婚，他们就很可能会生一个白种孩子；当然情况也未必一定。现在十分之一的孩子是混血人种，潜在的意思是一黑一白的双胞胎将会变得更加常见。”

Dr Wilson continues: “There are about 20 genes [from a total of about 20,000] known to control skin and eye colour. In each gene you have a light-skinned variant and a dark- skinned variant. If you have more of the dark-skinned variant in your DNA, you’ll inherit dark skin. If there’s more light-skin variant, you’ll inherit light skin. Also, you can have African hair and very white skin, which is very striking because it’s so rare, or you could have a dark-skinned baby with blond hair r. It is also possible to have dark people with blue eyes.”

Wilson博士说：“已知大约有20种基因（人体一共大概有20000基因）控制肤色和眼睛的颜色。每一种基因内都有亮肤色变体和深肤色变体。如果DNA中含深肤色变体较多，你将遗传到较深的肤色；反之亦然。同样，你可能拥有非洲人的头发但是皮肤很白，这是非常惊人的而且罕见的；或者你还可能有一个深肤色金发的宝宝；还可能是一个黑皮肤蓝眼睛的宝宝。”

The genetic reason for this phenomenon may be relatively easy to understand but the society’s response to it can be far more complicated. The discrimination of the colour of skin still existed

这一现象的遗传原因或许相对容易理解，但是社会对此的反应就复杂的多。对肤色的歧视仍然存在。

In the longer term, the rise of a mixed-racial gene pool could have some remarkable effects on our nation’s health. Some diseases prominent within the European population that could see numbers drop as mixed-race grow are cystic fibrosis, coeliac disease, muscular dystrophy and haemophilia.

从长远来看，这一混血基因库的出现很可能对国民健康带来非凡的影响。一些欧洲人种中显著的疾病很可能因为混血人种的增多而大大的减少，比如囊胞性纤维症, 乳糜泄，肌肉萎缩症还有血友病。