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Huntington's disease essay
Huntington's disease essay
Essays on huntingtons disease
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3. Imagine that a new medical treatment completely removes any negative effects of being a heterozygote for the mutant allele that cause Huntington’s disease; however, homozygotes for the defective alleles still develop the disease with its normal consequences. Assume everyone who needs it is able to get this treatment. How would you expect the frequencies of the Huntington’s allele and the disease itself to change over a long period following the introduction of this treatment.
Huntington’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that is caused by an autosomal dominant mutation in the HTT gene. There will be no change in the allele frequencies because this treatment only has an effect on the phenotype, not the genotype; it does not
revealed that three of the fourteen samples were were homozygous while the other eleven were
Test 1: In the first test the phenotypic frequency changed to favor fish that were green or yellow colored as every other blue fish was targeted by predators. In the last generation only one blue fish was left and eight and six of the green and yellow fish. The allele frequency changed as well with the yellow allele frequency staying the same while the blue allele number dropped down to ten.
Huntington's Disease and Its Ethics In “Genetics and Reproductive Risk: Can having children be immoral,” L.M Purdy discusses the notion that the recent advances in reproductive technology impose a moral obligation on individuals to prevent the birth of “affected” babies that will not have a “minimally satisfying life.” There are, however, several assumptions that the author makes in reaching the conclusion that having “affected” children is immoral. The author makes the claim that people with Huntington’s disease are unlikely to live a minimally satisfying life. It is known however, that Huntington’s disease does not take any affect until 40-50 years of age.
If Nathaniel Wu did not have the allele for Huntington’s disease, he would undeniably be the perfect scientist for the position in the eyes of the IPC. Wu is a 30-year-old microbiologist at one if the best research laboratories worldwide. After a series of interviews, the IPC was convinced his determination was not only factor that qualified him more in comparison to the other candidates; they realized that his potential “[is] likely to result in the type of discoveries for new drugs and treatments,” a goal that has not been reached since Dr. Peters’s incident. Wu is also known as a creative researcher and a hard worker, meaning that hiring him will likely result in a dramatic increase of earnings for the IPC. Considering that Huntington’s disease will most likely deteriorate Wu’s abilities, many may argue that it is not worthwhile to hire Wu; it is foreseen that the symptoms of Huntington’s disease begin to appear as soon as th...
...2013) chose to only use male mice in order to avoid the female estrus cycle. Using female mice would enhance this study because females certainly differ biologically from males and may therefore experience different effects of Huntington’s. The knowledge gained as a result of these differences may be beneficial in treating Huntington’s in male and female patients.
In 1993 a consortium of researchers who worked on the DNA samples from families in the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela, an area with a high density of HD and significant consanguinity, reported the successful discovery of the gene responsible for the occurrence of this disease, present in chromosome 4 and named it as IT15 (Interesting transcript #15). IT15 later called as the Huntingtin gene (HTT) [2]. HTT is ~10 kilobases (kb) long and translated into a protein of 3144 amino acids with anticipated molecular mass of 348 kDa. Huntigtin protein is expressed in in human and all mammalian cells, where brain and testis has the highest concentration; liver...
In Gattaca, the plot focuses on the ethics, the risks, and the emotional impact of genetic testing in the nearby future. The film was released in the 90s; yet in the present, the film does not give the impression of science fiction. Today, genetic testing is prevalent in many aspects of the scientific community. This paper will describe genetic testing, its purpose, diagnostic techniques that use genetic testing, relating Huntington’s disease to genetic testing, and the pros and cons of genetic testing.
Lewis, Ricki, (2014), Human Genetics, 11th Edition, Chapter 15 Changing Allele Frequencies, pp 293. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from
A piece of well-oiled machinery consists of an intricate and complex system: there are well-organized processes, mechanisms within the device work efficiently, and multiple processes function simultaneously to subsequently perform various functions. What happens when there is a glitch in the machine? When there is something wrong, such as connections between intricate processes, which do not follow through, the machine fails to function properly. In some cases, there are not any adjustment or fallback mechanisms. At that point, the damage can be irreversible and the machinery is no longer salvageable. [However, this can illustrate the interactions and processes within the complex machinery.]
Since the gene for HD is dominant, there is a 50% chance of a sufferer's
Huntington’s disease is named after George Huntington. This disease genetically is an inherited disorder that damages the mind and nervous system. This may affect actions of the body for example like movement, the ability to reason, awareness, and thinking and judgment. It can also affect their behavior. The word genetic is that the disorder is delivered on by each generation of offspring by special codes called genes(Patient.Co.Uk, 2011). Genes are relocated from a parent to offspring and is held to decide some characteristics of the children (Patient.Co.Uk, 2011).
In the past, the discovery of human disease genes has historically been an arduous undertaking. Extensive and exhaustive studies of genetic inheritance and pedigrees in generations of families led to the discovery of the color blindness gene on the Y chromosome in the early 1990's. As more biological tools became available, the pace of gene discovery increased. However, much of the biological laboratory practices were still rooted in intensively manual procedures. With the introduction of computing power in the mid-1980's, disproportionate amount of resources were being applied to hundreds of individual gene discovery efforts, such as Huntington's Disease and muscular dystrophy. It was with this realization that a large-scale effort at mapping the human genome was undertaken and in 1990, the Human Genome Project was deemed possible and launched officially by the National Institute of Health (Pollack 1,2).
Genetic testing is used to determine the risk of a patient or patient’s offspring developing genetic diseases. This is done with DNA sequencing in adults and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PDG) on embryos. These methods of genetic testing are effective means of determining the likelihood of developing diseases such as Huntington’s disease, a disease resulting from trinucleotide repeat on chromosome 4p16.3 that causes uncontrollable muscle movement and decrease in cognitive function. However, they only determine probability, which isn’t an entirely reliable means of knowing whether or not symptoms will arise.
...ary part in genotypes of potential interest that human geneticists breeders, as well as evolutionary geneticists are investigating. However, although we have the capability to unravel experiments that the founders of quantitative genetics would have never imagined, but their basic, un-computational machinery that they developed is most easily adaptable to the latest analyses that will be needed. We are far from ‘letting-go’ molecular biologists from the mathematical techniques/systems, because this age in respect to genomics has been forced into accepting gratitude due to the major importance of quantitative methods as opposed to the new molecular genetics. As geneticists tend to map molecular variation as well as genomic data, quantitative genetics will be moving to the front position because of its relevance in this age of rapid advancement in molecular genetics.