Research Project: Genetic Disorder

Genetic disorders are diseases caused by abnormalities in an individual’s genetic material. The abnormality can either be one of four single-gene, multifactorial, chromosomal, and mitochondrial. Single gene is when one gene is changed, mutifactorial is when multiple genes are changed, chromosomal is when one chromosome is missing or one is added and mitochondrial caused by mutations in the nonchromosomal DNA of mitochondria.
Strong or big genetic diseases can be inherited but then some smaller ones will not be inherited by the off-spring. If it’s a single gene mutation the disease is going to be inherited by the off-spring but multifactoral is more than likely not going to be passed on. Single gene mutation can either be a recessive or it can be dominant. Recessive is when both copies of a gene must be damaged or mutated. Dominant diseases are genetic diseases that only require a single copy of the gene to be damaged. From all this you can tell that there is a lot of ways and reason why a off-spring could receive a genetic disease. There are lots of ways they can get it. One switch could change someone’s life.
One genetic disease that I found was batten disease. Batten disease is a rare genetic disorder that severely affects the nervous system. This usually begins in children, between the ages of 5 to 10. Some early signs are subtle, taking the form of personality and behavior changes, slow learning, clumsiness, or stumbling. Theses symptoms will occur due to the buildup of substances called lipopigments in the body's tissues. Lipopigments are made up of fats and proteins. Another symptom is vision loss and this is usually the first symptom that is found because it can be shown in eye test. Batten disease is a recessive mutation, meaning both the genes need to be mutated. The good thing about this is you could only have one gene mutated and you would only be a carrier but you have a one in four change of giving it to your off-spring. An interesting fact about this is you usually only life to be about late teens early twenties. There is no current treatment for it which is why people only live as long as they do. I think they should be happy that they are able to live as long as they are able to and just be grateful for the life they do get to live. Another interesting fact is this disease appears to be more common in Finland, Sweden, other parts of northern Europe, and Newfoundland, Canada.
Stem cells are cells that have the potential to develop into some or many different cell types in the body. These cells can potentially help repair systems. Other words they divide without limit to replenish other cells for as long as the person or animal is still alive.When they do divide they can either stay a stem cell or they go change into a blood cell or muscle cell or brain cell. There are two different types: Pluripotent stem cells are any type of cell in the body except those needed to support and develop a fetus in the womb. Multipotent stem cells deal with a small number of different cell types. Stem cells are able to pretty much grow into anything they want and that is the reason that doctors want to be able to do stem cell research, they think in the long run that it is going to help the people. They want to be able to save a person that has cancer. Take the new cells that are found in the stem cell and put that into their useful DNA. Pretty much get rid of the disease without treatment or radiation. One type of stem cell research that is the most controverial is embryonic cells. Embryonic stem cell research has been getting the most money but this happens to be the one that people don’t like the most. They believe that they are killing life when they do this research and people see that as murder. Doctors argue that when you take the embryonic stem cell that there is no life and that people shouldn’t worry about that. Depending on your type of disorder stem cell research could benefit you by figuring out where the source of the problem is or it couldn’t benefit you. But like I said it just all depends on your health problem. In my opinion I don’t k now why this would be so bad, stem cell research overall. If we can use human DNA to help cure and save peoples lives isn’t that a good thing?

-Hannah Olson