I See the Light (but not the Color)
I've known for a while that my color vision is not normal. Nothing was said in school because I could clearly tell the red and green balloons apart on the annual vision test. On the other hand, I would sometimes confuse red and green, seeing colors a bit different than other people. I learned in graduate school that genetic colorblindness wasn't simple normal/red-green colorblind/colorblind. How complicated? very complicated!
The cells in our retina that detect color are blue (peak at 420-440nm), green (534-545nm), and red (564-580nm). The genes for the red and green are located on the X chromosome in tandem. Usually one red followed by several green. The blue is on chromosome seven. This means some forms of color blindness are sex linked (on the X chromosome) while others are not. The red-green colorblindness gets a bit complicated. When it comes to the eye, the genome usually expresses the first two. Since the red and green have nearly identical sequences and the green may be duplicated several times, changes can occur during recombination. The red or the green may be lost entirely or a hybrid red-green gene is created that peaks between the red and the green. If one has just red, that's one form a red-green colorblindness. Just green is another, a red and a red-green hybrid a third, a red-green hybrid and green a fourth, and just a red-green hybrid a fifth.
As I said, it's complicated.
This evening, when I should have been doing dishes, I was taking the color blind test by jean jouannic opticien. Admittedly, taking the test on a computer is not the best way to take a color vision test. Anyone who has looked at a bank of monitors and/or televisions can appreciate that screens differ in how well color is represented. With that caveat, the test gave an 11% indication of deuteranopia and a 29% of deuteranomaly. I'm fairly confident of the deuteranomaly result from tests in optometrist offices. This means (if I recall correctly) that I have the red and a mutated green, probably a hybrid red-green. It is the most common form of red-green colorblindness, occurring in 6% of men and 0.4% of women (which is 3240 and 216 times greater, respectively, than the odds of being selected as a marrow donor. On a side note, my HLA typings are the most and third most common in Europeans. I feel so common).
What really boggles the mind of everyone is wondering what the world looks like through the eyes of someone with different color perceptions. At least it should boggle the mind. If it doesn't, consider a career in multivariate calculus.
The cells in our retina that detect color are blue (peak at 420-440nm), green (534-545nm), and red (564-580nm). The genes for the red and green are located on the X chromosome in tandem. Usually one red followed by several green. The blue is on chromosome seven. This means some forms of color blindness are sex linked (on the X chromosome) while others are not. The red-green colorblindness gets a bit complicated. When it comes to the eye, the genome usually expresses the first two. Since the red and green have nearly identical sequences and the green may be duplicated several times, changes can occur during recombination. The red or the green may be lost entirely or a hybrid red-green gene is created that peaks between the red and the green. If one has just red, that's one form a red-green colorblindness. Just green is another, a red and a red-green hybrid a third, a red-green hybrid and green a fourth, and just a red-green hybrid a fifth.
As I said, it's complicated.
This evening, when I should have been doing dishes, I was taking the color blind test by jean jouannic opticien. Admittedly, taking the test on a computer is not the best way to take a color vision test. Anyone who has looked at a bank of monitors and/or televisions can appreciate that screens differ in how well color is represented. With that caveat, the test gave an 11% indication of deuteranopia and a 29% of deuteranomaly. I'm fairly confident of the deuteranomaly result from tests in optometrist offices. This means (if I recall correctly) that I have the red and a mutated green, probably a hybrid red-green. It is the most common form of red-green colorblindness, occurring in 6% of men and 0.4% of women (which is 3240 and 216 times greater, respectively, than the odds of being selected as a marrow donor. On a side note, my HLA typings are the most and third most common in Europeans. I feel so common).
What really boggles the mind of everyone is wondering what the world looks like through the eyes of someone with different color perceptions. At least it should boggle the mind. If it doesn't, consider a career in multivariate calculus.