Huntington's geneIn 1993, the identification of the gene that causes Huntington's disease was announced as the result of ten years' effort by the Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group, formed by six laboratories in the U.S., England and Wales. They stressed that more work remained before the mutation could be used as a precise prognostic tool. The disease causes progressive debilitating symptoms of jerky movements, dementia, personality changes, memory loss and irritability. The mutation, found on chromosome 4, affects a triplet of genetic units called bases represented by the chemical initials CAG, of which from 11 to 34 triplets are normally present in healthy people, whereas Huntington's patients have from 35 to 100 of them.« |
