Left Handers Rule

Sometimes I feel like an alien. Why? I am very left-handed.  I can’t do anything with my right hand.  While this can give me the upper hand (ha!) in tennis, the reality is most of the world is backwards to me. Same for one of my children who had to learn the downsides of being a south paw.  

Scientists have learned a few things about left handers. Your chances of being left-handed go up if one of your parents is, but you’re still more likely to be a righty. Only a quarter of left-handed children have left-handed parents.  And only 10 percent of people in the world are lefties. Just 1 percent is ambidextrous, meaning they can use both hands. Which hand you favor is a complex trait involving genes and the environment. Twin studies suggest only a quarter of handedness is genetic while the rest comes from a child’s surroundings.  

One of those genes may have been found by a new study using the UK Biobank, which contains a large set of genomic data for biomedical research.  They compared 300,000 right handers with 30,000 left handers.  

They found that a rare variant of the TUBB4B gene was three times more present in left handers, but not all of them had it.  Other genes may be involved, but we also already know that factors outside genetics have a larger influence. They vary greatly including testosterone levels in the womb, low birth weight, societal pressures, right hand tools along with many other impacts.    

As a left-hander I get to say this – despite some disadvantages, left-handers Rule!