Scientists Find DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin

Scientists Find Gene That Makes People Brown or White
ABCNews.com
by Amanda Onion

Dec. 14, 2005 — In a discovery that begins to shed light on what makes one person brown and another white, scientists have identified a gene that appears to be a key player in human pigmentation.

People share 99.9 percent of the same genes, yet pinpointing the very minor genetic variations that cause skin-color differences long has been a mystery to scientists. This discovery, published in the journal Science, marks a significant step toward understanding what's behind the panoply of human skin tones.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1408890

The article is pretty interesting, and it half-answers a question that I've always had; that is, how did white-skinned people come about. The other part to that question is why are their only indigenious populations in Europe and central Asia?