No Fingerprints

 

Fingerprints nowadays is important regarding legal documents and others that require fingerprints but what if you and some of the member of your family have no fingerprints in their fingers? That is the case reported on BBC website about the Sarker family which suffered due to lack of fingerprints on their fingers. But Sarker family is not the only family in the world who suffer from being no fingerprints among the members of their family there are there who suffer the same fate.

The condition according to the information in the internet, is a rare condition and is not common among families and members of the families. The rare condition is called “Adermatoglyphia. ” or “Immigration Delay Disease”

“Almost every person is born with fingerprints, and everyone's are unique. But people with a rare disease known as adermatoglyphia do not have fingerprints from birth. Affecting only four known extended families worldwide, the condition is also called immigration-delay disease, since a lack of fingerprints makes it difficult for people to cross international borders. In an effort to find the cause of the disease, dermatologist Eli Sprecher sequenced the DNA of 16 members of one family with adermatoglyphia in Switzerland. Seven had normal fingerprints, and the other nine did not. After investigating a number of genes to find evidence of mutation, the researchers came up empty-handed—until a grad student finally found the culprit, a smaller version of a gene called SMARCAD1. ….The larger SMARCAD1 is expressed throughout the body, but the smaller form acts only on the skin. Sure enough, the nine family members with no fingerprints had mutations in that gene. Being born without fingerprints doesn't occur simply because one gene has been turned on or off, Sprecher said. Rather, the mutation causes copies of the SMARCAD1 gene to be unstable. That mutation is also the first link in a long chain of events that ultimately affects fingerprint development in the womb. The rest of the links in the chain are still a mystery, said Sprecher, of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.”(National Geographic)

“The finger pads of people with adermatoglyphia are entirely flat—they have none of the arching or looping ridges that characterize the fingerprints of virtually all humans. Otherwise, though, people with the condition are entirely healthy, minus a slightly reduced number of sweat glands. There are other genetic disorders (including NFJS and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis) that lead to missing fingerprints, but they also cause much more severe health impacts, such as thin, brittle hair and teeth.”(Smithsonian Mag)

The main point : No fingerprints on one’s fingers nowadays are likely to suffer about legal documents and other matters that requires one’s fingerprints thus the condition is called “immigration delay disease”. The condition is also called “Adermatoglyphia. ” The condition is rare.

Fingerprintless Fingers (image from Science Mag website)