Is it likely our baby will inherit my color blindness?

[Stigler]

Is it likely our baby will inherit my color blindness?

[Millington]

Before you get too concerned, you should know that just because you're color vision deficient, doesn't mean your child will be. It depends on the cause of the deficiency and certain genetic factors. Color vision deficiency is when a person has a hard time to distinguishing between colors, typically between the shads of red, green,blue, or a mix of these colors. Red-green deficiency, the inability to distinguish certain shades of red and green, is the most common type. Injuries to the eye, some medications, or eye disease can cause color vision deficiency, but genetics are usually the reason. The culprit is a gene that's located on the sex-linked X chromosomes, which cause the trait to pass from parent to child.

[Stiles]

Colour blindness is a common hereditary (inherited) condition which means it is usually passed down from your parents.Red/green colour blindness is passed from mother to son on the 23rd chromosome, which is known as the sex chromosome because it also determines sex. Chromosomes are structures which contain genes, these contain the instructions for the development of cells, tissues and organs. If you are colour blind it means the instructions for the development of your cone cells are faulty and the cone cells might be missing, or less sensitive to light or it may be that the pathway from your cone cells to your brain has not developed correctly.A colour blind daughter therefore must have a father who is colour blind and a mother who is a carrier (who has also passed the faulty 'gene' to her daughter). If her father is not colour blind, a'carrier'daughter won't be colour blind. A daughter can become a carrier in one of two ways,she can acquire the 'gene' from a carrier mother or from a colour blind father.

[Millikin]

Our offspring may have normal vision as color blindness is not a genetic disorder but it is caused due to the lack of cones in the retina of the eye. Color blinds absolutely is a genetic disorder. Sometimes it is inherited, other times, it is a gene mutation that happens on its own. The most common type of color blindness is a sex-linked trait, meaning the gene is carried on the chromosomes that determine sex. Males are XY, and therefore can pass either an X or Y to their offspring, making them the actual determinants of the sex of the offspring. Females are XX, and so can only contribute an X. So, if a color blind mother (xx) has children with a non color blind father (XY), there are the possibilities: xX, xY. Her daughters will be carriers, and her sons will be color blind. If a color blind mother (xx) has children with a color blind father (xY), then these are the possibilities: xx, xY. All children will be color blind.So, to sum up, a mother with sex-linked colorblindness will always have color blind sons, and daughters will have a 50% chance of being color blind, depending on if the father is or not.