Odds are you know a handful of people who had more than one or two grey hairs before the age of 30.
Though grey hair is getting a better rep than it once had thanks to the widespread embrace and even sexualizing of grey hair in recent decades (in everyone from George Clooney and Helen Mirren to our very own Fashion Santa), going grey is a legitimate concern for some young professionals.
Inevitably, however, it will happen to all of us once the melanin (the protein responsible for hair colour) begins to disappear along with our wild years.
Now, for the first time, researchers have found a gene linked to greying hair. In a paper published in Nature Communications, the international team of researchers explained how the findings came from a larger study on genes that related to other hair characteristics like balding, monobrow, curliness, and beard growth
Led by Kaustubh Adhikari, a postdoctoral researchers at University College London, the team sequenced the genomes of more than 6000 people from Latin America. They then compared their genes against a variety of hair features, including how much grey hair they had.
As it turns out, only one gene stood out for grey hair. The gene affects how much melanin the hair follicle receives, and it’s been linked to blonde hair in Europeans. This is the first time the gene has been linked to greying, accounting for about 30 per cent of hair greying. The other 70 per cent is the result of things like age (obviously), stress (it’s not just a wives’ tale), and other environmental exposures.
Scientists will now have better insight into the genetic pathway of greying hair, which could lead to the development of new products that combat the onset of grey hair by potentially replacing the melanin and preserving the natural colour of a hair follicle.
In the meantime, that’s what hair dye is for (unless, of course, you want to take the Clooney route).
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