Sickle Cell Disease Research Paper

Sickle Cell Disease is inherited from parent to offspring. In the last counseling session, I mentioned that the disease is caused by the mutation in chromosome 11. This mutation does not occur randomly. The mutation first occurred thousands of years ago, and ever since then, the select few offsprings of the person that first received the mutation have inherited the mutated gene (controls inherited traits).
Sickle Cell Disease is a recessive disease, which means that a person only inherits the disease if both the genes in the genotype are recessive. To explain further, a genotype is a two letter code used to show the genes an organism has for a trait (for example: RR, Rr, or rr). Each letter represents a version of a gene, or an allele. There are two variations of alleles for a trait - a dominant allele and a recessive allele. Capital letters represent dominant alleles and lowercase letters represent recessive alleles. Dominant versions of a gene for a trait will always be present in one’s physical appearance, or phenotype, even if there is only one dominant allele in a person’s genotype. However, there has to be two recessive alleles in a person’s genotype for a person to have the recessive version of the gene

Kevin had sent an email regarding his family history. It was really confusing, but putting it in a pedigree made it much simpler (in the next slide). To determine one’s genotype using pedigrees, a person has to know that an offspring inherits one gene from each parent. For example, if the father has the genotype ss, for the trait of having Sickle Cell Disease, and the mother has the genotype SS, the offspring will inherit a dominant allele (from the mother) and a recessive allele (from the father) - the offspring’s genotype will be Ss. Like this, an entire pedigree can be solved. However, sometimes, not enough information is given to figure out the genotype of a