Colour blindness William Coote

Genetics are a combination of proteins that determine every characteristic of a living organism, from their sex to the shape of their ears. Genetic is all about DNA, DNA is a nucleic acid (an acid which is found in the nucleus of cells), it is found in the nucleus of structures called Chromosomes, humans have 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. Each chromosome is a tightly bound string of DNA; each chromosome looks different because the strings of DNA bond together in different ways. The genetic strings are a staircase called a double helix, the frame of the staircase is made of sugar phosphate and the rungs or steps in the staircase are made of proteins called guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine. Cytosine will only pair with guanine and adenine will only pair with thymine. There are various symptoms of colour-blindness because there are many different types of colour-blindness. A clear symptom is not being able to discern the difference between two colours like red and green. People can often be colourblind without knowing because they have grown up assuming that they have been seeing correctly so they might see red when we see green but they will describe it and call it green because that is what they have been taught to do. Example of colour blindness There are many visual tests that you can use to discover if test, if you cant see the you have colour-blindness. number 8 then you have a form of colour blindness this form of test is called an Colour blindness is a lot more common in males than Ishihara text. females, because it is caused by a deficiency in the X sex chromosome, so if a female has one deficient x chromosome but another normal x chromosome, the normal one will usually make up for the other defective gene. Around 8% of males worldwide suffer from some form of colour blindness compared to 0.4% of females. The most common form of colour blindness is red-green colour-blindness, around 99% of all colour-blind people are red-green colour-blind. Because colour-blindness is carried in the X sex chromosome, it is usually recessive in females due to the fact that they have two X sex chromosomes, but if a recessive female has a boy then there is a 50% chance he will be colour-blind and that is the same with the female except she would be unaffected and would just be a carrier. If there were an affected father then all of his daughters would be carriers of colour blindness but wouldnt be affected. For there to be a affected female then the father would have to be colour blind and the mother would have to have the colour blind gene. Colour blindness isnt a pedigree gene as it affects so many people. It is found in the X sex chromosome.

William Coote

Colour blindness William Coote

Gene therapy for colour-blindness hasnt been tested with humans yet, but it has worked with a monkey who had red-green colour blindness. Colour-blindness is a lot more common in monkeys, so they selected a few monkeys and found one, which was colour-blind by seeing how it reacted to different colours. The monkeys have the same type of colour blindness as humans, and it is passed on the same as male monkeys only have one X-chromosome. So they are perfect models for the human condition. The scientist repaired their vision by giving them a human gene, which enables the detection of red-green colours. Then they retested the monkey, and he was able to see the red and green colours! http://www.webmd.com/eye-health/tc/color-blindness-topic-overview http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/colour_blindness.sht ml http://www.colblindor.com/2009/01/06/50-facts-about-color-blindness/ http://www.hhmi.org/senses/b130.html http://www.google.com.au/imgres?hl=en&biw=1276&bih=706&gbv=2&tbm=is ch&tbnid=aWFiWFNvE1BKBM:&imgrefurl=http://www.healthytimesblog.com/ 2011/04/facts-about-colorblindness/&docid=s_SC_IRHklEmHM&imgurl=http://www.healthytimesblog.co m/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Defective-ChromosomeInheritance.jpg&w=610&h=384&ei=u_PGT6OnMsaOmQWA6vicCw&zoom=1&ia ct=rc&dur=892&sig=109046184671951457480&page=1&tbnh=138&tbnw=220 &start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0,i:86&tx=153&ty=121 http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090916/full/news.2009.921.html

William Coote