Friday, 19 August 2011

Genetic basis behind immigration-delay disease ..

I've got you under my finger … or not
We usually think of fingerprints in terms of their use in forensics: The unique character of each person's fingerprints serves as a useful means of identification whether it be for security purposes or for reliably connecting a suspect with fingerprint evidence left at a crime scene. But, why did we evolve to have fingerprints, and what are the biological processes involved in their creation? Insight into addressing these questions may be provided by studying a group of individuals who do not have fingerprints. This condition, known as adermatoglyphia, can be isolated or accompanied by additional syndromic features. In this issue, Nousbeck and colleagues report that a mutation in SMARCAD1 causes adermatoglyphia in the affected individuals of a large Swiss family.

The fingerprint research was published August 12 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.


Also featured on NatGeo
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110809-fingerprints-skin-disease-health-science-weird/

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