Genetic Disorders: Color Blindness

The genetic disorder I chose to study is color blindness. Being Color blind is actually very common for men and not as much for women. Color Blindness affects one in twelve men and one in two-hundred women. Color Blindness is also known as color vision deficiency or CVD, and is stated in the article, "Color Blindness" by Utah Eye Centers, that it is "an abnormal condition characterized by the inability to clearly distinguish different colors of the spectrum." That just basically means that some colors are harder to see than others when they are put next to each other. The diagnose for color blindness is very simple and it consists of different colored dots that are mixed and make a number, and if you can 't see the number, you are somewhat color

Our eyesight and capability to tell colors apart is caused by three cones in the retina of an eye. The three cones are red, green, and blue, and if any of the cones has a deficiency then that is what causes color blindness. From the "Color Blindness" article it says, "There are three basic variants of color blindness. Red/green color blindness is the most common deficiency, affecting 8 percent of Caucasian males and 0.5 percent of Caucasian females. The prevalence varies with culture. Blue color blindness is an inability to distinguish both blue and yellow, which are seen as white or gray. It is quite rare and has equal prevalence in males and females. It is common for young children to have blue/green confusion that becomes less pronounced in adulthood. Blue color deficiency often appears in people who have physical disorders such as liver disease or diabetes mellitus." Now why is Color Blindness a genetic disorder? Well in the article "Color Vision Deficiency" by Genetics Home Reference, it helps us understand that color blindness is inherited in an X-linked recessive pattern. They also state that, "The OPN1LW and OPN1MW genes are located on the X chromosome, which is one of the two sex chromosomes. In males (who have only one X chromosome), one genetic change in each cell is sufficient to cause the condition. Males are affected by X-linked recessive disorders much more frequently than females because in females (who have two X chromosomes), a genetic change would have to occur on both copies of the chromosome to cause the disorder. A characteristic of X-linked inheritance is that fathers cannot pass X-linked traits to their sons." This means that this genetic disorder normally skips a generation and your daughter may inherit this disorder if both the husband and wife have