DNA Traits · Skin & sun

Ease of tanning (EMX2)

How easily skin tans in the sun.

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Evidence · Replicated

What the research found

In the cited research, the T allele at rs35563099 was associated with greater self-reported ease of skin tanning in the studied cohorts.

CC: Tans less
CT: Middle
TT: Tans more

Slight effect

Evidence: Genome-wide association with independent replication
Who was studied: European-ancestry UK Biobank participants and five independent European-ancestry replication cohorts

1000 Genomes Project

How common each genotype is

How common each genotype is in the 1000 Genomes Project, by region
Region	CCTans less	CTMiddle	TTTans more
All regions2,504 people	72%	25%	3%
Africa661 people	67%	28%	5%
The Americas347 people	81%	18%	<1%
East Asia504 people	81%	18%	<1%
Europe503 people	71%	27%	2%
South Asia489 people	65%	30%	4%

Among the 2,504 people of the 1000 Genomes Project, in five world regions. These percentages describe groups of people, never anyone’s chance of having a trait.

Ancient genomes

Through time

How often the studied letter was read in ancient people, era by era, in the region chosen.

Region

Through time: Europe
Before farmingbefore 6500 BC	27%11 of 41 copies read
First farmers6500 to 3000 BC	19%128 of 673 copies read
Bronze Age3000 to 1200 BC	22%127 of 574 copies read
Iron Age and Antiquity1200 BC to AD 600	17%145 of 830 copies read
Middle AgesAD 600 to 1500	11%47 of 409 copies read
Today1000 Genomes	15%154 of 1,006 copies

Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes

Altai Neanderthal: Not read
Vindija Neanderthal: Not read
Chagyrskaya Neanderthal: No copies
Denisovan: Not read

For most ancient people only one of their two copies can be read, so these counts are copies read, not people. Close relatives, repeated samples and samples the archive marks as unreliable are left out. Damage in old DNA can fake this letter, so it is counted only from samples treated to remove that damage and from high-quality genomes. Ancient genomes from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource (AADR v66): 15,136 people.

rs35563099

The marker

Gene or region: EMX2 / RAB11FIP2 region
Marker: rs35563099
Location: Chromosome 10 · GRCh37 119,572,403 · GRCh38 117,812,892
Letters studied: C and T, with T as the studied allele

A DNA Traits report reads this marker in your raw DNA file and shows which of the three genotypes is yours, with how common it is. It counts the copies of the studied allele; it does not measure the trait itself.

Marker: EMX2 / RAB11FIP2 region · rs35563099
Location: Chromosome 10 · GRCh37 119,572,403 · GRCh38 117,812,892
Studied allele: T
Published statistic: OR 0.89 per T allele for low tan response (95 per cent CI 0.87 to 0.91, SE 0.01), UK Biobank discovery P 6.61e-24, n 121,296; replication meta-analysis in five European cohorts P 5.33e-7 (Table 1); in Lifelines the same T allele lowers skin reflectance, beta -0.008 (SE 0.0007), P 1.0e-29, n 27,534 (Vollenbrock 2022 Additional File 8, Table S5); in Chinese participants T goes with fewer freckles, OR 0.60 (Wang 2022 Supplementary Table 3) (Results, first paragraph of Genome-wide association analyses (the 121,296 figure) and Table 1 with its footnote (the odds ratio))
1000 Genomes Project phase 3, people with 0, 1 and 2 copies: All regions 1810 / 623 / 71 · Africa 443 / 184 / 34 · The Americas 282 / 63 / 2 · East Asia 407 / 92 / 5 · Europe 358 / 136 / 9 · South Asia 320 / 148 / 21

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Limits

What it cannot tell you

Studied for tanning in European ancestry only, and the effect is small.

Genome-wide association study in 176,678 Europeans reveals genetic loci for tanning response to sun exposure (Visconti et al., 2018)

The same topic

More in Skin & sun

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