The inhabitants of the Volga village of Ignatovka have passed on a unique finger mutation from generation to generation - syndactyly. The four-fingered village has existed for over two centuries. Inhabitants of neighboring villages are already accustomed to them and call them “marked”
- In Ignatovka, almost every second person has four fingers. The history of our unusual family goes back to the beginning of the 19th century. It was then that our common ancestor lived - grandfather Pavel, - 71-year-old Zinaida IVANOVA shares her memories. - They say that his parents were siblings who committed the sin of incest. That is why the child was born with this deformity.
“There are 12 children left of Pavel: most of them inherited the mutation,” continues Zinaida Fyodorovna. - And with each generation there were more and more “marked” ones. We have always been a very friendly family: in order not to hear ridicule and insults behind our backs, in the Soviet years, rarely did anyone move from their native village to the city. After all, in our region, everyone in the region got used to the "marked" and did not consider us some kind of exotic.
“When I was young, I tried to find out why children with disabilities are born in our village,” says Sergei Mitrofanov. - I visited a geneticist, only he did not clarify anything to me. He offered to go to the surgeon who would fix my hands.
FEDOR PAVLOV: it's easy to do without the fifth finger
Yes, only I refused: I knew the story of one of our neighbors, who dreamed of becoming a five-fingered. She underwent plastic surgery - they cut the fused fingers, but everything ended unsuccessfully: the doctors damaged her nerves, and after the surgery, the unfortunate woman could no longer move her fingers.
There is no end to the suitors
- Believe it or not, our four-fingered Ignatovskie girls have always been especially popular with grooms from the surrounding villages. Because everyone is pretty, kind and hardworking, as if on selection, - Maria Pavlova enters into the conversation.
Pavlova herself has three children. And everyone inherited the mother's trait. Fyodor, 38, says he never considered his peculiarity to be an ugliness or a hindrance. At school, he was generally praised for his calligraphic handwriting.
- I manage the housework without problems. The absence of a finger does not interfere at all,”the man says. - Mom worked as a weaver at a cloth factory all her life. And there dexterity of fingers is the first thing!
Promotional video:
COMMENTARY
OF THE SPECIALIST Valery KAMENYUK, Head of the Department of General Genetics, Ulyanovsk State University:
- The history of the village is very interesting. Each family must be observed directly on the spot: to understand its pedigree, build diagrams and find out whether this gene is sex-linked, dominant or recessive. Apparently, the gene is dominant, that is, the dominant one, which is why mutant children are born so often.
REFERENCE
Syndactyly is a congenital anomaly of the hands, when several fingers are connected by a common skin. Occurs in about one case in 5000 newborns