Genetics: Easy as ABC

Widya Mulyasasmita, a geneticist from Stanford University, says that every living organism has a ‘recipe book’ which gives instruction on how to build it. In humans, this recipe book is split into 46 chapters, known as chromosomes. In each of these chapters, there are recipes for eye colour, how to make fingers, and how to build a brain; each of these chapters has a near identical partner chapter, one where the content is inherited from your father and the other from your mother. The important chapters, when it comes to determining whether you will be biologically female or male, are chapters 45 and 46, known as the sex chromosomes. There are two types of sex chromosomes: X and Y. Biological females have two X chromosomes (XX), and biological males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (XY). As the mother can only pass on an X chromosome, it is therefore the father who determines the child’s sex, as the dad can either pass on an X chromosome (which would make the resultant child...

In some cases, when carrying out scientific research, you cannot perform early investigations on humans due to ethical reasons. Therefore, to observe the impact of investigations in a real-world setting, rather than relying on theoretical or clinical research alone, we need a substitute to take the place of humans. For example, we could take a strain of Covid-19 and spray a bunch of bleach on it in a lab. Congratulations, we now have a potential way of killing Covid-19, let’s now just inject bleach into people to have the same result…not such a great idea (right Trump?). Ultimately, understanding scientific concepts and solving them in a clinical, theoretical setting, does not always translate into real-world solutions. Animals allow a kind of ‘intermediate’ to suggest how humans might respond, and thus have been vital in helping us understand human phenomena. But why do animals make the perfect ‘intermediate’? Widya Mulyasasmita, a geneticist from Stanford University, had a very cle...

Love them or hate them, royal families have a fascinating history. From the Egyptian Pharaohs to Queen Elizabeth II, there have been many monarchs across many continents and many years. Historically, one family would manage to stay in power through consanguinity, marrying a biological relative. The theory was that marrying a relative would keep the bloodline pure; ironically this led to the development of many genetic disorders in these families. To understand this, we must first understand how genetic conditions are inherited. A typical person has 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 in total, if you’re good at maths😉); you inherit 23 chromosomes from your mum, and 23 chromosomes from your Dad. In each of these pairs of chromosomes, you have genes, which correspond to one another. For example, one pair of chromosomes will hold the genes that define eye colour, so one chromosome includes the eye colour gene from the mother, let’s say it’s blue in this case, and the other chromosome include...

Imagine if we lived in a world where scientists could make drugs specifically tailored to your individual needs. Well, what was once only seen in sci-fi films, is now a reality. Pharmacogenomics combines pharmacology: the study of drugs, with genomics: the study of a people’s genes. This revolutionary new branch of science has the potential to develop drugs, specially tailored to an individual’s genetics; this would avoid negative side effects and perfect the dosage required for optimum effect. Pharmacogenomic s is a vital new field, less than 20 years old. Current drugs are based on a ‘one size fits all’ basis, but this does not necessarily mean they will work the same way for everyone. A person’s genetics may be the root cause of this difference, although other factors like gender, age, and lifestyle will all play their part. Professor Munir Pirmohamed said that most prescribed drugs only work in 30-50% of people. Furthermore, statistics show that 6.5% of hospital admissions in the...

In the wake of the Human Genome Project, which completed the sequencing of the entire human genome in 2003, the British Prime Minister in 2012 (David Cameron) announced the launch of the 100,000 Genome Project. This project took the Human Genome Project a step further, with the aim to sequence 100,000 genomes of patients with cancer and rare diseases. The project looked specifically at how the individuals’ genomes contribute to the development of disease, whilst also providing information which could improve disease diagnosis and personalised treatment. The project completed in 2018, and the findings were both vital and ground-breaking. To give some clarity on the hierarchy of what makes us, us, think about the image that we see when we talk about DNA: the spiralling ladder. Each of the ‘steps’ of the ladder are called bases and there are four different bases in DNA: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and Cytosine (C). In total, there are around 3 billion bases in a person’s genom...

The age-old debate: are you the way you are because of your genes or your environment? In the nature versus nurture debate, nature refers to all your genetic and hereditary factors, whereas nurture refers to all the environmental factors, including childhood experiences and relationships, the way a person was raised, and their culture. But which of these plays the most important role in making someone the way they are? It is widely accepted that both nature and nurture play a role in a person’s behaviour, traits, characteristics, and personality, but it is frequently debated as to whether they have a 50:50 impact or whether one has more sway over the other. The Centre for Education and Youth have a very clever way of responding to this question. They begin by asking ‘how do you work out the area of a rectangle?’. As we all know, we’d work out the area of a rectangle by multiplying its length by its width; then they go on to ask, ‘what’s more important for calculating the area of a re...

We all have mental health. Mental health is our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. We can have good mental health, but unfortunately, we can also experience poor mental health, with 1 in 4 people experiencing mental health issues at some point in their lives. Increased understanding, awareness and acceptance around mental health issues has come from the hard work of advocacy groups, but also from scientific research. Scientists have been able to explain many aspects of mental health, including the biological factors contributing to poor mental health. One of these factors: our genes. Scientists have long since discredited the ridiculous notion that mental health issues are caused because of a weakness in person’s character. Research has found that mental health issues are instead caused by a combination of biological, environmental and psychological factors. One of these biological factors is a person’s genetics, and twin studies have been used to show how genes may pla...