The Gene Pool

Huntington's Disease is a hereditary disorder that affects brain cells. Over the course of a 10-20 year period, the patient's brain will slowly get smaller and smaller, which can affect many things including:

• Aging

• Ability to talk

• Ability to walk

• Ability to eat 

• Ability to breathe

Eventually, people with Huntington's Disease will need 24/7 professional care in order to survive. 

 

Huntington's disease is an autosomal dominant disorder, which means that a person who carries it only needs one copy of the gene to develop the disorder. It is caused by an inherited fault on a gene on chromosome 4. The fault causes the gene to be larger than it should be, which undermines the function of brain cells around it, and then eventually destroys them. Science has not yet been able to explain exactly how this happens. 

 

Huntington's Desease is an autosomal dominant allele which means that the gene is located on a numbered chromosome and that the trait is dominant and not recssive, since it is located on a numbered chromosome this means that it is imposiible to be located on the x or y chromosome because those are sex-linked chromosomes. Dominat means that a single copy of the mutation can affect your genes. This means that if you were heterozygous or homozygous dominant for huntington's disease you would have the disease.

 

Definitions:

Heterozygous: A person having two different alleles of a certain gene or genes, most commonly results in the trait being dominant as apposed to recessive a heterozygous genotype for Huntington's disease would look like this, Hh

 

Homozygous: A person having two of the same alleles of a certain gene or genes, can either be homozygous dominant or homozygous recessive, a Homozygous dominant genotype for huntington's disease would look like this, HH, and a Homozygous reccessive genotype would look like this, hh

 

Allele: An allele is the number that represents "part of" a gene or trait, alleles are either dominant or recessive. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources

GHM. "Huntington Disease." Genetics Home Reference. GHM, June 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.

 

Medline Plus. "Autosomal Dominant: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia."U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.