Genetic Susceptibility To Disease
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are single bases within a gene sequence that differ from that gene's consensus sequence, and are present in a subset of the population. SNPs may have no effect on gene expression, or they can change the function of a gene completely. Resulting gene expression changes can, in some cases, result in disease, or in susceptibility to disease (e.g., viral or bacterial infection).
Some current tests for genetic diseases include: Cystic Fibrosis, Tay Sachs Disease, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), Huntington’s Disease, catastrophically high cholesterol, some rare cancers, inherited susceptibility to cancer. A select few are explored below.
Read more about this topic: Public Health Genomics
Famous quotes containing the words genetic and/or disease:
“What strikes many twin researchers now is not how much identical twins are alike, but rather how different they are, given the same genetic makeup....Multiples don’t walk around in lockstep, talking in unison, thinking identical thoughts. The bond for normal twins, whether they are identical or fraternal, is based on how they, as individuals who are keenly aware of the differences between them, learn to relate to one another.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)
“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,—let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”
—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale 1788–1879, U.S. novelist, poet and women’s magazine editor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 36-40 (December 1828)