Friday, April 10, 2015

Shortness Gene Discovered


     Everyone knows that height is written in our genes, but scientists were able to dig deeper and find exactly how it is relevant. A new study has found that very short people have more rare deletions of gene regions than those of more average height. This suggests that these deletions may also play a role on determining height and not just gene mutations. 

     Researchers from Boston's Children Hospital analyzed DNA from 4,400 children and found that those who were shorter had fewer copies of many genes than the ones from the average height pool. When they took 6,900 samples from adult African Americans and found that the shortest 2.5% of the population also had excess amounts of gene deletions. Lead researcher, Joel Hirschorn, said that while many of these “copy number variants” are inherited, some can arise spontaneously.

     Being from the smaller side of the spectrum, I find this article very interesting. Not only can gene mutations hinder height, but now even complete deletions of gene regions can be held responsible as well. The only thing that can question the authenticity of the study is that the children being studied were also there for developmental delays and problems such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or birth defects, possibly contributing to poor growth.

2 comments:

  1. This is really interesting. I am the shortest in my family even among my cousins. I wonder if in the future more information could help deter dwarfism.

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  2. This is very interesting to me, as I am also short in my family. This could explain a lot of the major height differences in family, but it is also an interesting statement that the study included children at the hospital for developmental delays, and other possible defects that effect growth. I think more research should be done with children with defects such as those, and also children without defects to see how/if their genes are different.

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