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'That Doesn't Sound So Terrible'

March 29, 2011

This post has been modified from an earlier version.

Over at Slate's Brow Beat blog, Roxanne Palmer says 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. According to Taylor biographer J. Randy Tarbonelli, just after her birth, the actress' physician told her parents that she had "a mutation," because she had two rows of eyelashes. In Tarbonelli's account of the event, Taylor's mother said:

Well that sounded just awful ... a mutation. But, when he explained that her eyes had double rows of eyelashes, I thought, well, now, that doesn't sound so terrible after all.

Later, researchers associated a like phenotype with a variant at FOXC2. Beyond double eyelashes, Slate's Palmer adds, FOXC2 mutations are also associated with "lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome, a hereditary disease that can cause disorders of the lymphatic system." Though Taylor's variant had an effect similar to a cosmetic enhancement, extra eyelashes as a result of this mutation "can sometimes grow inward and damage the cornea," Palmer adds.


To point out- Elizabeth

Submitted by murugu.manickam on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 12:32.

To point out- Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932, the gene was cloned in 1998...

You beat me to it...

Submitted by Scott_K on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 12:54.

You beat me to it...

Thanks for your comments.

Submitted by ccurtin on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 14:18.

Thanks for your comments. We've updated the post to clarify that the doctor did not know what genetic mutation was involved -- that that came later.

Not all cases of distichiasis

Submitted by jay.ellison on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 15:08.

Not all cases of distichiasis are due to FOXC2 mutations, so don't jump to conclusions.

One wonders if Elizabeth

Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 15:32.

One wonders 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 disorders of her lymphatic system or vision problems, would they have elected to have the pregnancy terminated?

A very ambiguous remark?

Submitted by Sceptic on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 04:20.

A very ambiguous remark?

I've never seen those purple

Submitted by georgeta.bibea on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 06:19.

I've never seen those purple eyes, nor in photos or movies. They're looking closed to a deep blue. So much for that purple color. The eyelashes were very visible, indeed. I've always thought that there is a makeup effect. One interesting point has been mentioned by S. Pelech here in bijuterii argint comments. Today, amniocentesis is used for fetus engineering with the agreement of parents. There are presented some risk percents and just based on that data doctors are advising parent to make an abortion if percents are too high. I think this is not right, those percents in amniocentesis results mean nothing at all.