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How did color blindness arise during human evolution?

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Color vision probably first evolved in aquatic animals because the atmosphere, and (shallow) water, is transparent only to a pretty narrow band of EM radiation. read more

Today, most mammals have two cones with a color vision that closely resembles red-green color deficiency in humans (of the protanope variety.) Early primates, however, probably invented an aspect of the color vision all over again. read more

The other exciting thing is that this procedure may provide a way to restore full color vision to humans with certain types of color-blindness. [1] Mancuso, K. et al. Gene therapy for red-green colour blindness in adult primates. read more

So, red-green color deficiency didn't really arise in human evolution. Instead, it would be better to say that once trichromatic color vision was reinvented, red-green color deficiency failed to die out—while being better at picking ripe fruit was definitely an advantage, it wasn't so big of an advantage to totally wipe out the dichromatic gene pool. read more

The other exciting thing is that this procedure may provide a way to restore full color vision to humans with certain types of color-blindness. _____ [1] Mancuso, K. et al. Gene therapy for red-green colour blindness in adult primates. Nature 461, 784–7 (2009). [2] There is also an opsin gene on the human #7 chromosome. That’s the S-type. read more

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