the link i provided is free story. also 40,000 mentioned in msnbc article:
May 8 ? In an achievement that could point the way to treatments for a host of illnesses, scientists have mapped chromosome 21, the smallest human chromosome and the one associated with Down syndrome, epilepsy, Lou Gehrig?s disease and Alzheimer?s. It is the second human chromosome whose DNA has been fully deciphered. Chromosome 22 was mapped last fall.
Post your views on MSNBC's Health Bulletin Board
Watch a video clip of the Nightly News report.
?ANOTHER VOLUME has just been placed on the shelf. Now we really have to roll up our sleeves and assess what these genes are doing there, what role they play in causing disease,? said Dr. Francis Collins, chairman of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
The German- and Japanese-led team that mapped both chromosomes is part of the Human Genome Project, an international effort to decipher chemically the entire human genetic blueprint. Humans are normally born with 23 different pairs of chromosomes, which are made up of genes.
Chromosome 21 contains relatively few genes, but they are in a complex tangle.
?When one stares at a sequence like this, it makes you realize how complex it really is,? said Huntington F. Willard, chairman of genetics at Case Western Reserve University. He was not involved in the research. ?It?s not just a simple string of 225 genes. It?s really a mess, a hornet?s nest ? a hodgepodge of duplications, altered sequences and arrangements that determine the health and welfare of our species.?
The future of genetics
MSNBC Interactive
? Look into our crystal ball of genetic developments over the next 50 years.
The consortium of international scientists, led by researchers from the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology in Germany, and the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center in Japan, mapped the sequence which is published in this week?s edition of the science journal Nature.
The researchers found that chromosome 21 contains far fewer genes than the 545 in chromosome 22, the second-smallest chromosome.
The relative sparseness of genes in chromosome 21 may mean the total number of genes in human DNA is under 40,000 ? not the 100,000 or more that had previously been thought, said Andre Rosenthal, a professor at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology in Jena, Germany.
That means ?we are not so different from drosophila? ? the fruit fly ? ?or yeast,? Rosenthal said.
The map of chromosome 21 is 99.7 percent complete; technical limitations prevented a complete mapping, said David Patterson, an American scientist involved in the project.
HOPE FOR NEW TREATMENTS
Experts said the achievement is particularly significant for the study of Down syndrome, which is the most common form of genetically caused mental retardation and affects one in 700 live births. The complex disorder is caused by an extra, third copy of chromosome 21.
?Once we can find the genes that are important for learning problems, what we hope is that we?ll be able to understand what those genes do and somehow compensate for having an extra copy of the gene,? said Patterson, president of the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Denver and chairman of the science advisory board of the National Down Syndrome Society.
MSNBC's Genetics archive
?These are the tools to design strategies to identify the culprits, the genes, which are responsible for the pathogenesis of the disease,? said Marie-Laure Yaspo, of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, who led one of the research groups.
?I would call it a tool box, where we have everything we would need to design novel strategies. We have to design novel strategies because the problem of Down syndrome is not a mutation. It is too much of something ? that is one more chromosome,? she added.
Advertisement
Quick Gifts Swimwear Books Music & Video Computing Electronics Toys & Games More . . .
Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, said the chromosome map could eventually shed light on why people with Down syndrome have a very low rate of breast, lung and gastrointestinal cancers. It could be that an extra copy of chromosome 21 has tumor-suppressing qualities.
?One can argue that an extra dose of a gene will usually be a bad thing, but once in awhile it can be a good thing. It can be protective,? Tanzi said.
Chromosome 21 also is linked to certain types of leukemia, a form of manic depression and congenital heart disease.
The Human Genome Project expects to have a rough draft of the entire human genetic blueprint done this summer. The public project, which is expected finish its work by 2003, is competing against a private company, Celera Genomics Corp. of Rockville, Md., which hopes to sell the information to pharmaceutical companies and others.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
msnbc.com |
