Special Senses / VISUAL EXPLAINER
Where Does Eye Color Come From?
Melanin in the anterior iris contributes to eye-color differences, while absorption and scattering of light in iris tissue also affect appearance. Multiple genes influence pigmentation, so neither granule counts nor a simple single-gene chart predicts every shade.
READ THE IMAGE
What the illustration shows
A navy-and-gold poster titled Where Does Eye Color Come From? An oblique iris ring surrounds a black pupil opening. A wedge reveals pale anterior stroma above a dark posterior pigment layer. A circular inset magnifies a stromal melanocyte with brown-black melanin granules. Lower panels compare more and fewer brown granules without assigning exact eye colors. Three notes describe anterior pigment, tissue optics and multiple genes. The gold AllHumanBody.com brand and full slogan are at the bottom. Colors, structures and scales are conceptual.
How to interpret this poster
- Conceptual pigment-location comparison, not an exact shade predictor, measured optical model or inheritance chart.
- Posterior pigment is a simplified band rather than a cellular-layer map; granules, cells and thicknesses are exaggerated.
- No parentage, ancestry, personality, disease inference or inheritance percentage.
- Optical explanation is background in a primary genetics paper, not a measured validation of the generated tissue geometry or a prediction for an individual.
- AI-assisted educational illustration; not physician certification, microscopy, a diagnosis or individualized medical advice.
- Fine annotations need enlargement; the full description provides an accessible text alternative.
- Display the full uncropped illustration; do not trim titles, legends or boundary annotations.
AI-assisted educational illustration, adapted into web-sized images without changing its composition. This is general education, not an individual diagnosis or treatment recommendation.
EVIDENCE / CONTEXT
Sources and what they support
- MedlinePlus Genetics: Is eye color determined by genetics? ↗
Anterior iris melanin and complex inheritance.
- What colour are your eyes? Teaching the genetics of eye colour & colour vision. Edridge Green Lecture RCOphth Annual Congress Glasgow May 2019 ↗
Complex genetic teaching context; abstract and figure captions only, not direct evidence for detailed tissue-scattering mechanism.
Evidence correspondence is limited to the abstract. - A comparative GWAS of eye colour in light and dark eye genetic backgrounds defined by HERC2 rs12913832 polymorphism in a Canadian cohort of European ancestry ↗
Introduction explains melanin absorption, collagen-matrix scattering and iris structural contributions to perceived color; not an optical experiment.