Why was the color blue chosen by evolution?
That's not how evolution works... random variation, sometimes detrimental, will sometimes lead to advantage
The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
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Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#12Why was the color blue chosen by evolution?
This is a joke right? Evolution doesn't choose anything.
In this case, the family had a hemoglobin variation, that resulted in a different kind of non-functional hemoglobin being produced. This hemoglobin has a blue tint. This, combined with their pale coloration, meant they had a blue tint.
This is not too dissimilar to how other hemoglobinopathies come about in nature. For example, the thallassemias and sickle cell anemia are two common hemoglobinopathies. Unlike the Fugate family's hemoglobinopathy, which likely did not provide any benefit, these two do provide some benefit to heterozygotes, and thus end up existing at a steady state in the population. The Fugate family's would likely disappear if it caused any issue in reproductive fitness (even a minor one), and the family reproduced among a sufficiently large population. However inbreeding combined with genetic drift means that there simply does not end up being a large enough population for the law of large numbers to take effect.
On the other hand, if the condition causes no reproductive fitness deficiency or increased reproductive ability, then the gene could potentially continue to exist in some very small number of the population. It could die out due to the simple fact of not having many affected people able to reproduce enough to make statistics matter.
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#13Is this article a carnival sideshow? " had that caused " I get it, we like to look at situations where people are different, but does this actually inform, educate, or improve us by reading? Or is this article just a chance to point out some people who are different. I've been thinking about this recently, and trying to moderate my curiosity (because blue skin certainly piques my curiosity) against what I'm trying to…
> Another way to think of it is, who benefits from this
I don't know about the Fugate's condition, but hemoglobinopathies are among the most common genetic diseases, and several are known to cause very severe symptoms when inherited in a dual-recessive fashion (like thalassemia and sickle cell anemia). It's unethical to conduct reproductive research on entire family lines, but when there is a pre-existing case study, one wonders what one could possibly learn about hemoglobin and why it seems to be a relatively dynamic protein. Just a thought as someone who does have a mild form of multiple thalassemias.
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#14Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#15Why was the color blue chosen by evolution?
Why are y’all downvoting someone for asking a genuine question they didn’t know the answer to?
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#16> The Fugates he treated ingested this dye and within a few minutes, the blue coloration of their skin disappeared, and their skin turned pink.
Really? Within a few minutes??
Nitpick aside, such an interesting article! The world is such a big and interesting place!
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#17A fascinating article, but it's a bit frustrating that there are no colour photos. I tried searching the internet and found photos of other blue-skinned people but none of them had this genetic cause (mostly it was silver "supplements").
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that this article might meet those criteria, I still think it's important to ask questions like this about articles like this. Because it really is a fine line between putting people on display (like we literally used to do when we kept other humans in zoos) and examining the various biological traits in humanity.
So you commented before reading it? Your critical thinking would be more useful in any other article that you believe does not match that standard.
I've read the article. I commented after reading the article. I asked questions because I was curious how others would answer them. Because I had not reached conclusions to them myself.
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how evolution works... random variation, sometimes detrimental, will sometimes lead to advantage
Sometimes both. Sickle cell anemia gives you slightly better odds of surviving malaria for instance.
Sickle cell anemia is Mendelian and recessive. So if 2 carriers (Rr and Rr) have kids, 50% of the children will be strictly superior (carriers), 25% will be normal, and 25% will die young. Not a bad outcome, especially if you have a lot of kids to reduce the variance.
Re: The Fugate family of Kentucky has had blue skin for centuries
#20> The Fugates he treated ingested this dye and within a few minutes, the blue coloration of their skin disappeared, and their skin turned pink. Really? Within a few minutes?? Nitpick aside, such an interesting article! The world is such a big and interesting place!
More amazing (to me) was that a doctor actually solved this problem effectively. A few times that I went to doctors with minor problems in the last decade, they usually had no clue what's wrong (they even admitted it), but prescribed antibiotics.