Elizabeth Taylor
'That Doesn't Sound So Terrible'
29/03/11 15:32 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Roxanne Palmer at Slate's Brow Beat blog wrote that the late actress Elizabeth Taylor's most famed physical feature — her eyes, "arresting: large, liquid, and framed by a thick fringe of eyelashes" — may have resulted from a mutation at FOXC2 that resulted in two sets of eyelashes. One potential complication is that damage to the cornea can result if the extra eyelashes grow inward, and FOXC2 mutations are also associated with lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome, a hereditary disease that can cause disorders of the lymphatic system. S. Pelech raises the ethical question that if Elizabeth Taylor's parents had amniocentesis and genome-wide sequencing performed when she was just a tiny fetus and they learned that she had a genetic mutation that could cause immune and vision problems, would they have elected to have the pregnancy terminated? Read More...