大千世界:雙胞胎膚色竟一黑一白
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僅僅只有五歲，但是他們已經是當地的名人了。實際上，這對雙胞胎一出生就出現在在地區新聞頭條，因爲他們的一個是白皮膚，一個卻是黑皮膚。
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.
英國每年有12000對雙胞胎出生，其中385對是黑色或混血種族。但是像Kaydon 和Layton Wood這樣的非常稀少.
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. ”
愛丁堡大學人口遺傳學家Jim Wilson博士解釋說：“父母對後代各佔50%的遺傳基因，第一代混血兒在膚色上肯定會中和父母雙方的膚色。但第二代混血兒就不同了。如果第一代混血兒和白種人結婚，他們就很可能會生一個白種孩子；當然情況也未必一定。現在十分之一的孩子是混血人種，潛在的意思是一黑一白的雙胞胎將會變得更加常見。”
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博士說：“已知大約有20種基因（人體一共大概有20000基因）控制膚色和眼睛的顏色。每一種基因內都有亮膚色變體和深膚色變體。如果DNA中含深膚色變體較多，你將遺傳到較深的膚色；反之亦然。同樣，你可能擁有非洲人的頭髮但是皮膚很白，這是非常驚人的而且罕見的；或者你還可能有一個深膚色金髮的寶寶；還可能是一個黑皮膚藍眼睛的寶寶。”
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
這一現象的遺傳原因或許相對容易理解，但是社會對此的反應就複雜的多。對膚色的歧視仍然存在。
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.
從長遠來看，這一混血基因庫的出現很可能對國民健康帶來非凡的影響。一些歐洲人種中顯著的疾病很可能因爲混血人種的增多而大大的減少，比如囊胞性纖維症, 乳糜泄，肌肉萎縮症還有血友病。
小編有約：
親愛的朋友們，你們知道別的雙胞胎的新鮮事情呢？
