They were described and drawn by Blaschko 75 years ago.
HUMANS WITH STRIPES SKIN
Going back further, a 1976 article in a medical journal discussed Blaschko’s lines, with an abstract stating:īlaschko’s lines are the pattern assumed by many different naevoid and acquired skin diseases on the human skin and mucosae. Lined and whorled nevoid hypermelanosis can create beautiful patterns. Blaschko noted, there are dozens of skin conditions that follow these lines, but most of them affect patches of skin or a single body part, not the entire body. Most people will never see their own stripes. One cell line pushed and swirled through another like steamed milk poured into an espresso to make a latte. As those skin cells continued dividing, they expanded and stretched to cover a quickly growing body. Some became muscles, others bones, still others organs. As the cells divided, they differentiated. Each one of us started out as a single cell, and then a little glob of cells. … today we know what they are: cellular relics of our development from a single cell to a fully formed human. In November 2012, biologist Joe Hanson published a post (“Humans have stripes and you just can’t see them”) about Blaschko’s lines on Tumblr, referencing the above-linked Gizmodo article:Īnother of the Reddit posts linked to a 2015 Mental Floss article about the claim (“Our Skin Is Covered With Invisible Stripes”), which explained, in part: They only become apparent with certain skin conditions or if the two populations of cells have different DNA.
These Blaschko’s lines are there for the rest of us but invisible because all of our cells have the same instructions for how dark to make our skin. If it developed differently, you would end up with a different pattern. The patterns are just a consequence of how the skin develops. He noticed that in some skin diseases, the pattern was linear on the arms and legs, S-shaped on the stomach and V shaped on the back. A German dermatologist named Alfred Blaschko first noted these lines more than a century ago. If the differences are more subtle, then you might need something extra like UV light to see the pattern. When there is a big difference between the two DNA’s instructions on how dark to make the skin, then you get obvious Blaschko’s lines. The Blaschko’s lines result from the fact that some of a chimera’s skin cells say make darker skin and some say to make lighter skin. One of the instructions DNA has is how dark to make the skin. The skin of a chimera is made up of two sets of cells, each with different DNA.
Because a chimera starts out with two cells with different DNA, the chimera ends up with some cells that have one set of instructions and others that have a different set. Remember, DNA is a set of instructions for creating and running an individual. These patterns arise from the fact that chimeras start out with two cells, each with different DNA. These swirling patterns are found on the backs of many chimeras. In the episode, what the investigator discovered was something called Blaschko’s lines.
HUMANS WITH STRIPES CODE
Sometimes, however, the two different sets of DNA code for skin types that are dramatically different, which leaves people with literal stripes on their skin in the pattern of Blaschko Lines.Īn undated post ( published in 2012 or earlier) on a site attributed to “Department of Genetics, Stanford School of Medicine” addressed a television reference to a human with stripes, and explained:
Often the skin color of the two types is indistinguishable, or subtle enough that it can only show up under black light. In rare cases, they can send out different waves of epidermal cells, one alternating with another. Sometimes different fertilized cells will get mixed up with each other and build one human between them. Some people (and animals), happen to have been made with two different sets of DNA. Humans with chimerism can show them dramatically. While Blaschko Lines sound like a cheat – “We have stripes! But they’re invisible.” – but there are some dramatic examples of them. At least one of the Reddit posts linked above cited a 2012 Gizmodo item, “Humans have stripes! You just can’t see them.” It described human stripes as “Blaschko Lines,” and concluded:
0 kommentar(er)
