Genome By Matt Ridley

In the book, Genome by Matt Ridley he writes about the different discoveries in each chromosome and where they originate. Ridley makes you look at genome as if it was a book. The twenty-three different chapters would be the the chromosomes, each chapter contains wonderful stories which would be the genes, each paragraph is made up of words which would be the codons, and the letters would be the bases. Each chapter is genuinely unique in every way possible. The fondest one to me that Ridley creates would have to be Chromosome 4. Huntington’s disease is found on chromosome four. Huntington’s disease is a genetic disorder that causes the breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. Individuals with the form of Huntington disease usually live about 15 to 20 years after signs and symptoms start. Huntington’s disease is

She was determined to understand more about huntington's disease because she had a 50% chance of getting it. she traveled to Venezuela to meet the doctor “Americo Negrette”. While there she found out she had 11,000 descendants in 8 generations. 9,000 of whom were alive in 198. No less than 371 of them had huntington's disease. 3,600 carried at least 25% chance of getting it because if at least one grandparent. “Every child of a parent with HD has a 50/50 chance of inheriting the expanded gene that causes the disease. If the child has not inherited this expanded gene, he or she will never develop the disease and cannot pass it on to their children” (HD Society of America 2016). From there, Nancy sent her information to Jim Gusella’s laboratory. He began to test genetic markers in search of the gene. Mid 1983, he isolated a marker close to the gene affected and pinned it down to the tip of the short arm of chromosome 4. By finding that he then knew which 3 millionth of the genome it was in. The gene was found its text was read and the mutation that lead to disease