Put It In The Jug

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

I found the baby that Bryan always wishes he was!

Complete story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/three_armed_baby

Unknown said...: So amazing. On a totally unrelated tangent, I met a nurse the other day that had all her organs flipped around - her heart was on the right side of her chest. Totally WILD.

It's a condition called "situs reversus" & all of her internal organs are on the opposite side of what they should be normally. As I was talking about this case with my neuro buddies, we postulated that it had something to do with a protein gradient during embryonic development. A quick browse in Pubmed reveals that the condition may have something to do with abnormalities in dynein, a microtubule protein, and its role in signalling cascades that determine handedness (http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/web/paper.php?doi=10.1387/ijdb.052132ba)

Life is just one big mystery.; 6:53 PM EST