phenotypes

 I have been obsessed as of late with genetics, and I was telling my son the miraculous story of my rare blood type that required my husband have his blood typed, too. This lead to my doctor asking if we believed in heaven, because his best explanation of how extremely rare our situation was was " This was a match made in heaven." Mostly, it was intended as merely a cute little anecdote, but my son wanted to know the rarity of his blood type, too. and I explained that it would merely be an A- not AO- though that was what it technically was. He could not grasp that without an explanation of genotypes and phenotypes (an entirely unexpected discussion this morning - but it got me thinking).

So, What is a phenotype? I often hear it as referred to as the expressed trait. In blood typing usually we refer to our pheno type,  not what genes we actually have. because I only can give an O he must have an O,but his blood type is an A; hence, we know that he has a genotype of AO but because the O is actually non existent.  He also inherited an A his blood may be less full of A's but the only thing that shows up is the allele of A . Anyhow, that boy loves to turn any conversation into one about blood types, so I mention it, but my thoughts went somewhere else.

My son's name is Joseph. I love that name because I always loved, and felt slightly guilty about it actually, Joseph better than any other child of Jacob, and I was watching for like the millionth time a video about a group of Samaritans who claim lineage through Jacob, and I noticed a phenotype I hadn't thought much of... I have not completed a pamphlet about Prophecies  regarding the United Kingdom and Canada in the bible. The fascinating jist of it is that the Celts in the Scottish highlands and Ireland who colonized Canada and such are of the Northern tribes of Israel. I was most curious because of linguistic evidence combined with The mapped path of my Genetic ancestors, but the last kicker was that phenotype: Red hair.

I saw a video years ago about an archeological dig in Egypt where the discovered a statue of "Joseph" and they speculated that there was evidence of red paint in his hair, which was very odd and note worthy among Egyptians.. That was that. It was a bit of information I had not thought of and was surprised that I even knew that or paid any attention to it even. I thought about how DNA claims that I am pretty much entirely Scottish and North Irish, but I do not have red hair and no one in my family does either, but many of my documented/known ancestors is their hair color so, I must have that Genotype but not the expressed trait, so my DNA sort of does support that theory, except that in a video clip that theory showed that a group traveled across turkey, and for a while stayed in the Mediterranean (Iberian peninsula) . Until, I allowed another company to speculate less and simply give me the facts of my DNA and let me compare to find ethnicity and I got many "outlying" matches in Spain and Portugal, that do not show up in any family tree or heritage, but in Genetic matches with archaic remains I was able to chart the dates of the remains and locations to see the same path as was explained as one that traced the Celtic tribes from the middle east to the Isles of the U.K.

Even with all of my research, which seems to be my singular obsession as of late, the most obvious clue is the phenotype of red hair.. I mean, where did it come from if not Joseph? It seems pretty uncommon and not found in many other cultures. Anyhow, that was on my mind tonight, but I really ought to go do something else.