GENOME Entry #2: Chromosome 4 - Fate

In the beginning of this chapter, we are told that genes are there to cause diseases and that we cannot escape from our fate. The author gives us the example of Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome where the disases depends on the number of "CAG" that repeats in the DNA. The age at which the madness will appear depends on the number of repetitions of the word CAG in one place in one gene. It was not until the discovery of Huntington's diasese that the first completely dominant genetic disease came to the light. In the 1970's a woman went Venezuela where much of the people were thought to have Huntington's disease. The doctor and her began to conduct research on the topic and it was not until 1993 that they found out the gene was found on chromosome 4. We learned that some families seem to be more prone to the Huntington's mutation than others, but that is because it depends on the simple matter of letters in their gene and how it is matched. The way it is close together determines how CAGs can add up and repeat. The chapter has a good way of explaining that we can't escape from our fate, that we are given what we are given because hereditary diseases like these are inescapable, it's in our genes.