Discovery
In 1970, researchers performing cytogenetic research on a group of juvenile offenders in Scotland found an abnormal translocation in chromosome 1 of one of the boys, who also displayed characteristics of an affective psychological disorder. After this initial observation, the boy's family was studied and it was found that 34 out of 77 family members displayed the same translocation. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) (or DSM-IV) criteria, sixteen of the 34 individuals identified as having the genetic mutation were diagnosed with psychiatric problems. In contrast, five of the 43 unaffected family members were identified to have psychological indispositions. The psychiatric illnesses observed in the family ranged from schizophrenia and major depression to bipolar disorder and adolescent conduct disorder (which the original research subject had). After studying this large Scottish family for four generations, in 2000, this gene was given the name "DISC1". The name was derived from the basis of the molecular nature of the mutation: the translocation directly disrupts the gene.
Read more about this topic: DISC1
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)