Am I reading this right?

I would love to read the entire paper. Be that as it may, this abstract of a study published a few weeks ago seems to conclude that mental retardation may be caused by breaks in the genetic chain.

What I found even more eye-openinging was that the genes involved in these breaks may be "inherently unstable." Wow -- so does that mean mental retardation can happen a lot easier, genetically speaking, than we previously believed? Am I reading this correctly?


www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Originally posted by behindthescenes
I would love to read the entire paper. Be that as it may, this abstract of a study published a few weeks ago seems to conclude that mental retardation may be caused by breaks in the genetic chain.

What I found even more eye-openinging was that the genes involved in these breaks may be "inherently unstable." Wow -- so does that mean mental retardation can happen a lot easier, genetically speaking, than we previously believed? Am I reading this correctly?


www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

I don't think they are saying retardation is more or less likely than was previously thought. I didn't read the whole article (can get it for you if you'd like), but what it seems to say is that genetic disorders are often associtated with "flanking segmental duplications" that predispose the genes to rearranging. Based on this information, the authors sought out regions of the genome that fulfilled this criteria, then actually looked at the regions in people who are mentally retarded, something results from genetic 'mistakes.' They examined 130 candidate regions, identify 16 as potentially 'pathogenic. That the authors believe these regions to be inherently unstable doesn't alter our perception of retardation - that is it doesn't make it more or less likely, it simply adds another link in the growing chain of mechanism... ie: how does retardation occur.

BTW, your link doesn't work. Please put a space between the link and smiley face.

[edit on 1-9-2006 by mattison0922]

Interesting article. I agree with mattison. Here is a similiar link:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

It's basically saying the same thing... the key point being: "segmental duplications define hotspots of chromosomal rearrangement, likely acting as mediators of normal variation as well as genomic disease.."