Some Gene Mutations May Be Treatable With Diet

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have found a link between variations and responses to vitamin treatment in the human cystathionine beta synthase gene. This gene can be responsible for the disease homocystinuria when the gene is defective. Homocystinuria is an inherited metabolic disorder sometimes treatable with vitamin B6. The researchers than correlated the specific gene mutations with the severity of the disease into categories ranging from perfectly healthy and functional to severe and untreatable. The scientists then switched the same gene from humans with that from bakers yeast to test which ones were healthy, treatable, or untreatable. From the results they found that there were 84 DNA sequence variants and from this information there is hope that physicians can treat patients based on the genotype they contain. Similar projects are also underway for other defects such as cleft palate and blindness to see if there is a similar connection to yeast.