My grandmother's gnarly toes...are on MY foot!

My toes could try out for a horror movie. They are long, gnarly and probably have an extra digit. They can pick up objects  well and can give a pretty good pinch. My husband claims he is not afraid of them but I have seen the way he shudders and scoots away when my toes touch him in bed! I can laugh now, but growing up I was horribly embarrassed by my toes and the only thing I loved about them was that they were the same exact toes as someone I loved more than I can begin to explain – my grandmother!

My grandmother was a beautiful woman and I don’t just mean on the outside. She was quite possibly the most generous person I have ever known. She fed the children in her district, she raised more than twice as many children as the 7 she had. In fact for a couple years, she and my grandfather raised me during the week. She was feisty (I felt that she could stand up to anyone). She was smart (she was the village midwife and alternative medicine healer), and she was sweet (she loved my grandfather, her children and the dozens of grand and great grand children she had with a strength I so admire).

But back to her toes. My grandmother had those long, gnarly toes too. I bet my grandfather shied away from them in bed too. My mom however, has stubby little toes on a foot that looks nothing like mine. Those gnarly genes certainly did skip a generation and I am waiting in anticipation to see them one day on a grandchild’s foot since both my sons have taken their short, non descript toes from their father.

So as I admire my toes, I think about DNA and how things like that get transferred from one generation to another. Every cell in my body (except my mature red blood cells) carry the gene for those gnarly toes. The DNA in the cells of my skin, my brain, my bones and yes, the DNA in the cells of those toes all carry that gene as well as all the other genes that program how my body works. But how does that gene get passed down to my kids? 

Well, the DNA in the eggs in my ovaries that with the equal help of the DNA in my husband’s sperm became the blueprint for those delightful little boys we have now. While I’m sure I passed on the gene for the gnarly toes, it appears the genes for my husband’s normal (read: boring!) toes must have won out in what was allowed to show up. My gnarly toe genes must have gone the way of recessive blonde hair genes, only allowed to show up if they can gang up in numbers and there is no other gene to challenge them for the right of showing up on the outside of a person. Yes, I am ashamed to admit, my gnarly toes are from weak genes…sigh.

Evolutionary scientists say that evolution takes place as a result of a random beneficial mutations giving an organism an advantage in surviving and reproducing  more than other less well adapted living things. In fact mutations, random ones, are believed to have caused our grand evolution from “simple” single celled organisms to awesome living things like plants that perform photosynthesis for us all to have food, or amazing creatures like the cheetah, or the bombardier beetle that makes toxic chemicals to scare off predators, or humans like me, albeit with gnarly toes.

Without going into the details of the fact that most random mutations cause deadly or debilitating conditions the vast majority of the time (can you say cancer,cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia etc etc), let’s think about how that mutation would make it to another generation.

Let’s say tomorrow, I undergo a mutation in my DNA. This mutation will change the DNA coding for my gnarly toes. If I am lucky it will code for a change in my bones and make my toes petite and beautiful. More importantly the mutation will not have caused any harm to me so that I survive to have children. Now we have to assume that this mutation took place also in my eggs in my ovaries, because this the ONLY DNA that will have the ability to pass this trait on to a future generation. OK, so my ovaries have eggs with viable mutation. Now, we have to make sure that one of these eggs of the 400,000 or so eggs that a female produces will actually be part of producing another human being. If it isn’t one of these, this mutation doesn’t do diddly as the next generation will not have this new petite toe DNA. Then there are the whole compatibility issues that the changes in the DNA from the female, is compatible with the DNA in the male. (Think of the fact that if you breed a horse and a donkey – though very similar in DNA will result in a mule that is 100% of the time sterile and unable to produce offspring).

So with this new petite toe mutation, I would now need to have another child to pass on this gene. This gene would have to "survive" all the conditions mentioned above to make it to the next generation. Happily, and with a somewhat warped sense of humor I realize the odds of this tiny thing happening is probably as close to zero as you can get, so again I look forward to forming my family club of the future: Girls of the gnarly toed sisterhood!!

Friends, I believe God put plenty of variation in our genes to allow us to be a myriad of beauty for Him and to allow us to adapt and survive under many different situations. My toes may be gnarly but it’s because the Lord God made me that way!




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