With Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon, today we are talking about our fingerprints. A major discovery has just put an end to a scientific mystery.
franceinfo: A team of genetic researchers has just discovered how our fingerprints are formed?
Mathilde Fontez: Yes, and the discovery is that it’s not just chance that forms these little furrows. It’s not just the skin that bends randomly. The pattern of arcs, loops or swirls that we have on our fingertips is controlled by our genes.
There were suspicions, so a Chinese team gathered all the studies that existed on the subject: the genomes and the fingerprints of 23,000 people. And that’s how they found 43 regions of DNA that code for the shape of fingerprints. And in particular a gene, the EVI-1 gene, which also controls the development of our limbs.
The same genes that shape our hands shape our fingerprints?
It’s exactly that. The researchers were able to verify this in practice, by activating and deactivating this gene in mice. They were able to observe that with the gene modified or deactivated, the mice developed unusual imprint patterns on the ends of their legs.
In humans, they even find a correlation with finger length. For example, the ones that have a swirl fingerprint pattern, which wraps around the center – I’ll let you watch if that’s your case – it’s mine. Well we tend to have longer fingers. This can be seen in particular on the little finger: the researchers measure that on average, it is longer by 1.32 millimeters.
The researchers have even detailed the phenomenon: it is due to the action of a protein, the production of which is triggered by the EVI-1 gene. Once secreted, it causes the formation of small pads at the end of our fingers while we are still in our mother’s womb, around the tenth week of pregnancy. Then these pads disappear. But the form is imprinted on the imprints.
Does all this mean that we can predict the shape of fingerprints by analyzing DNA?
No. Not to that extreme. The researchers made a point of specifying it in their publication. Genes don’t control everything, only the main patterns. There remains an element of chance in the structuring of the skin, and this is what makes our fingerprints so incredibly varied. All different!