Hair, Tooth or Scale?
Although at first glance, these three appendages appear to have little in relation to one another, there are intriguing hints of a common developmental origin. Can you guess the identity of today’s Science Mystery Pix?
❋ The Toothless Men of Sind: Our story begins in 1875, with Charles Darwin describing the curious case of a Hindu kindred whose males suffered a near absence of teeth and hair. This inherited condition, known as ectodermal dysplasia, was tracked down to defects in genes coding for a signaling protein (ectodysplasin-A or EDA) and its receptor (EDA receptor or EDAR). Similar hairless and toothless mutations were found in the mutant mouse strains Tabby and Downless, pointing to a common developmental origin for hair and teeth.
❋ Fighting Tooth and Scale : Which came first, teeth or scales? It is thought that the earliest teeth arose in shark-like fish that lived in the Early Devonian period, about 400 million years ago. The pointy tooth-like scales found near the mouth of fossils would have helped grasp prey or fight predators. Eventually, these transformed into the teeth of modern day mammals.
❋ A Fishy Tale: Now for the final link! Mutants of the medaka fish (Oryzias latipes), originally isolated from wild populations, are viable and fertile but completely lack scales. Named rs-3 (for reduced scale-3), the mutation affected the same ectodysplasin-A receptor (EDAR), which is required for the initiation of hair development in mammals. So what do you think..is the image a 20x magnification of hair, tooth or scale?
REF: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11516953
http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/teeth-prehistoric-111117.htm
Image from Dr. Havi Sarfaty of the Israel Veterinary Association and winner of Nikon Small World competition.
#ScienceSunday #ISeeTheWorldWithScience
madame scientist's not-so-mad musings 
I was born on the Ides of March, that might have helped to tip the balance. Too obscure, nomad dimitri?
The color is a clue too, Azlin Bloor 🙂 Although, I’m not sure why the pigment is so patchy.
My guess was wrong, but you might want to consider renaming the file before you upload it 🙂
Haha! I’m not really trying to make this hard 🙂
This is how I feel when I set questions for grad school exams 😉
Akinola Emmanuel I shall resist looking! I went for the obvious because they look like … Mmm, obviously wrong. maria nasir any guesses?
I’m thinking hair. I’ve seen some close-up pictures of teeth before and they didn’t look like this. I am assuming the discoloration is pigmentation of the hair.
However, I thought hair looked a bit different close up too, but I still think it looks more similar to hair 🙂
Thanks for all your guesses, folks! Who would have thought that the three have anything in common? david olick , hair does have overlapping layers, so that makes sense.
Holq todos
Rajini Rao Oops! I completely missed the option of scale. I thought I had to choose between tooth and hair.
Rethinking your options, david olick ? 🙂
Rajini Rao, Azlin Bloor, though at first glance it looks like a beautiful watercolour painting of Chinese hand fans but my very, very wild guess is that these are scales, perhaps !
Scales
Another nice write up, Rajini Rao
Always read your fascinating posts.
What kind of fish? シ
Rajini Rao Yes, it definitely fits with a scale better lol
Chinese hand fan is a beautiful choice, maria nasir ! Gary Ray R , trying to trip me up, eh? 😀
I see crochet pattern. 😛
mary Zeman , ooh very nice! Definitely lacy and handmade. Also reminds me of tatting which I learned when I was a little girl. It had these delicate bumps along edges.
I’m going with fish scales, but I think it looks like a lichen too.
Those little “floral” circles in the image do remind me of lichen growth on tough gray rocks, Rugger Ducky .
Loved the image and the science. I will guess – completely just guess – that it’s scale.
http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/–hsajgOyr3Y/UV1p6_SNFII/AAAAAAAADow/GQLlyG2BFVk/s000/Lichens.jpg this is why the colors got me as well. 🙂
Oh my Gosh! What a gorgeous photo, Rugger Ducky ! Thanks so much for sharing.
See those circles on the rock? They do look like the ones in this microscope image.
Whether these are teeth, scales or hair, you can’t go wrong with keratin.
I am going to wildly guess that this is a picture from an underwater dweller with such great aerodynamic properties that the ancient Olympians used them during their first games. (Yes, I cheated :p)
“Investigative Googling” sounds better, Koen De Paus 😉 Could you drop off a link re. the Olympics connection? I’m not finding it in my google search.
Wait a minute,Are you not advertising your hair?
Iniobong Akpan I have not experimented with orange hair yet 🙂
I should have said the ancient Olympians sort of used them although not really is closer. Yes I am being cryptic, I was afraid of making it too obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Discobolus_Lancelotti_Massimo.jpg
I am derailing your game towards guessing which animal the picture belongs to. :p
Definitely scales, the colours remind me of Sparus aurata
Koen De Paus , the link is the most excellent clue! I like it 🙂
Great clue Koen De Paus, also native to the Amazon River basin. Thank you Wiki.
Great post, Rajini Rao. Fun to see the guesses and great collaboration.
Fun for me too, Marta Rauch . Hope you are having a relaxing weekend!
Did you know you can drag and drop images into google image search?
Cool feature that I have used before to identify strange unknown objects.
I do it all the time. Love the Image search on Google, Gary Ray R 🙂
I use the image search too Rajini Rao, we had found a sculpture of a bird in the backyard and I was able to identify it by taking a picture and doing an image search. I even found the artist, it was made in England.
That what I did with your image.
Learned it all from Search Guru Dan Russell
The world is at our fingertips, Gary Ray R !
Many people forget but It truly is.
I use this chrome extension; http://goo.gl/S4UdDk (pictured) which sort of makes you feel like an omniscient god at times. :p No more typing, everything you want to know is literally just one click away.
Just added it, Koen De Paus , thanks. I’ll let you know if my goddess quotient is elevated 🙂
The world of information, and the world of smart, engaging people. One of the reasons that I like G+
Guessing scales, but that might be too obvious :-). Beautiful art work/photograph!
Sometimes the obvious is the right choice, Mara Rose 🙂 It looks like a delicate water color ..or even acrylic, because of the shine to it.
So much beautiful art in Nature, Rajini Rao and you find marvelous examples.
Answer: for those who had not already
cheatedguessed : these are the scales of a discus fish, magnified 20 times. It won 6th prize in the Nikon Small World photo competition in 2009.http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/best-microscope-macro-pictures/photo6.html
gud
Hair: They are more in number and relatively more spread out throughout the body;
Teeth: Localised with a different composition;
Scales: Similar to hair but more “fleshy”.
Apparently, the threesome should have different and unique origin in terms of their “biological/morphological” coding. But, if you compare the human evolution from an ape to a man vis-a-vis the body-appendages’ origin from scales-
>hair-> teeth or any other order, things appear more cloudy!!!!très jolie!
Amazing Rajini Rao. A wonderful summary as always 🙂 Do you know if EDAR expressed on other tissue / cell-types as well?
Hi Lo Sauer , the EDA/EDAR signaling system works on all epidermal outgrowths: hair follicles, sweat and oil glands, mammary glands, teeth and many others. Also, they are not expressed all the time but are turned on in response to other developmental signals (anagens).
Clyde Herrington , the answer and link are a few comments up. The image is of ordinary fish scales 🙂
Rajini Rao the common thing between hair & scale is keratin, i think. i know that the hard substance that covers teeth is some kind of dentin or adamantin, if i remember correctly. i assume that tooth is an extension of bone, therefore calcium and all that. so i am stumped on the common origins of the 3. surprised.
the photo: i would say hair, or fur?
nomad dimitri interestingly, while reptile scales have keratin, as do mammalian hair, hooves, horns, and bird feathers, the scales in fish (which is what this image shows in 20x magnification) are different- made of bony dentine like material. In fact, the placoid scales of sharks are closely related to teeth.
Rajini Rao fascinating. servers me right, i thought scales, of course, and then i thought it was a trick question. got you with the woodpecker though!!!
nomad dimitri , let the second round of competition begin! FYI, I thought the burrow was that of the burrowing owl..hence the allusion to being wise.
Rajini Rao oh, i got the allusion, it was the best guess so far. in california the burrow in the ground, like mice, it is unbelievable!
Definitely the scales. 🙂
Placoid scales?
Brian Mahon , definitely scales! But not placoid. Those are found in sharks and look pointy and toothlike. These are from a discus fish, so probably ctenoid, because of their edges.
Rajini Rao
Rajini Rao don’t forget about this week’s post ;)))
Susana M. I have a Valentine’s Day poem/science post for you. My husband said it was boring 😦
We’ll have to prove him wrong, haha.
Perfect for the occasion!
Ha!! Of course he’s wrong 😉
Well what does he have to say on it??
😉
Bill Collins this is the guy who watched me practice my thesis defense many years ago, interrupting me with this helpful suggestion: why don’t you walk from one end of the stage to the other , you know, just to wake people up” 😀
Rajini Rao hello
Scales on teeth, showing plaque deposits
JeniO
It’s a scale:-)
Scales
superrbbb
Nice
I just like it.
vry nycc
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I would guess scale.
V