Mutation Erases Fingerprints
Friday, August 5, 2011 - 05:10
in Mathematics & Economics
Imagine going through customs with everything in order. Passport’s okay, and all seems fine. But when your fingerprints are scanned, the customs agents are looking surprised. Apparently, you have no fingerprints. Sounds weird, right? And yet, it is exactly what happened to a Swiss woman in 2007 when she tried to enter the United States.As it turned out, the woman had a very rare condition known as adermatoglyphia, leading to a lack of fingerprints (see figure 1), and a lower production of hand sweat than the average person. Very little is known about the condition, and so far, only four families carrying the mutation have ever been documented. read more