Concepts of Genetics 11th Edition by William Klug,Michael Cummings,Charlotte Spencer,Michael Palladino

Exercise 1

On July 11, 2008, twin sons were born to Stephan Gerth from Germany and Addo Gerth from Ghana. Stephan is very fair-skinned with blue eyes and straight hair; Addo is dark-skinned, with brown eyes and curly hair. The first born of the twins, Ryan, is fair-skinned, with blue eyes and straight hair; his brother, Leo, has light brown skin, brown eyes, and curly hair. Although the twins' hair texture and eye color were the same as those of one or the other parent, the twins had different skin colors, intermediate to that of their parents. Experts explained that the blending effect of skin color in the twins resulted from quantitative inheritance involving at least three different gene pairs, whereas hair texture and eye color are not quantitatively inherited. Using this as an example of quantitative genetics, we can ask the following questions:
What approach is used in estimating how many gene pairs are involved in a quantitative trait? Why would this be extremely difficult in the case of skin color in humans?