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Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Essay

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Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy affects the DMD gene. This gene creates the protein dystrophin which helps strengthen muscles in the diagnosed patient’s skeletal and cardiac muscles, and also strengthens some small nerve endings near the brain. Dystrophin is what holds the muscle cell’s framework together, and works with other genes to protect the muscles from injuries when they contract and relax. It also plays a part in cell signaling by interacting with proteins that correspond with the brain. Doctors and scientists say that the DMD gene is especially imperative for normal muscle structure and connections using cell-to-cell communication. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy occurs on the DMD gene, but the DMD gene is on the X chromosome. This means it is sex-linked, or in the sex chromosomes, but it is also a recessive gene. This means that males are more likely to get it because they only have one copy of the X chromosome, so there is no other healthy X chromosome to compensate for their mutated one. Since Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is sex-linked, it does have a hereditary component. The following Punnett Squares show the likelihood of parents who are Heterozygous, Homozygous Dominant, or Homozygous Recessive offspring having Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The capital N stands for no DMD because …show more content…

If a person only has one of the DMD recessive genes in their genotype paired up with the dominative gene of not having DMD, they are only a carrier of the gene. This means that the disorder is not active in them, but if they cross with another carrier of the recessive gene there is a 25% chance of their offspring having DMD active inside of them . To better understand the patterns of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, see the Pedigree below which shows three generations of

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