Tom Schneider.
origin: 2001 February 14
updated: 2011 Sep 22
Left-handedness in people:
Amar Klar works on the RGHT gene, which specifies preference for hand utilization in humans.
In the May 1, 1998 issue of Genes and Development (vol. 12, no. 9), the cover picture is supposed to represent an EM image of the helical filament made by the archaebacterial homolog of RecA. The filament on the cover is left-handed, but one of the points of the paper is that the archaebacterial protein makes a right-handed filament (just like RecA). Thanks to: Scott Keeney, Ph.D. s-keeney@ski.mskcc.org Program in Molecular Biology (212) 639-5182 office Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (212) 639-5180 lab 1275 York Ave., Box 97 (212) 717-3627 fax New York, NY 10021
For your interest, Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay once about left handed snail shells - it turns out people who study snails have the same problem. Almost all species have a right handed shell, but many people draw them as left handed.(1999 May 7)
The essay is in Dinosaur in a Haystack, by Stephen Jay Gould, published by Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1996 (originally published in hardback by Harmony Books)., pp. 202-217. The essay is entitled "Left Snails and Right Minds".
At the cone shell conotoxins web site, there is a Gallery of Coneshells. The Marbled Cone Conus marmoreus from Queensland is special because it was etched by Rembrandt as sinstral rather than the correct dextral configuration. (Thanks to John Garavelli (garavelli@NBRF.Georgetown.Edu) for pointing this one out!) (1999 August 5)
Louise H. Naylor
(Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry,
Department of Biosciences,
The University of Kent,
Canterbury CT2 7NJ,
Kent,
ENGLAND,
L.H.Naylor@ukc.ac.uk)
worked on left-handed
Z-DNA for her Ph.D. thesis.
She was "awarded a grant from the Royal Society and the
British Association for the construction of a bronze sculpture representing
the advances in genetics at the end of this century. This is in
collaboration with an extremely talented local artist, Asun Bassas Mujtaba,
whose enthusiasm and talent has helped get this project off the ground.
If you visit our website:
http://www.cant.ac.uk/ccweb/profiles/pfile7a.htm
you will see that the sculpture, entitled 'Huella humana' (human
fingerprint) is a female nude encapsulated in a DNA helix - most notably,
one which is left-handed! The sculpture is currently being bronzed and
should be completed within the next month. The DNA helix will be cast in
steel."
(1999 July 27)
2004 Jan 12: Nebulasearch encyclopedia article "Left-handed"
Tom Schneider.
origin: 2001 February 14
updated: 2011 Sep 22