logo
logo
AI Products 

I Saw the Light (and it made me think of epigenetics!)

avatar
Greenwood Genetic Center
I Saw the Light (and it made me think of epigenetics!)

As we took the lights off of our tree in the Diagnostic Lab at GGC this year, we started thinking… ‘What do our genes and holiday lights have in common?’


That’s probably not a question you had ever considered. But, I’ll give you a hint – it has to do with expression.


Strand of holiday lights turned offEven if all the bulbs on every strand of lights are working and connected just right, a Christmas tree cannot express itself or ‘do its job,’ until the switch is flipped and the lights are turned on. Like a perfectly good strand of holiday lights, even our normal genes need to be turned on to do their job.


Wait, what?


Remember in biology class when you learned that all genes have a DNA sequence? For example, a section of DNA may read AAGCTTGCTGTG…. For many genetic conditions, the cause of the symptoms is a typo in that sequence, for example there’s an A where there should be a C. But what if a patient has a gene that is sequenced correctly, but it is simply not turned on? Well, just like a tree that is not plugged in, that gene isn’t expressed. It can’t do its job – which can cause all sorts of problems.


Over the past four years, EpiSign has provided an answer to many families whose diagnosis had been missed by traditional genetic testing technology. Parents have been able to breathe a sigh of relief when their child’s diagnostic odyssey has ended after a journey that, for many, has lasted for years. Clinicians can now give their patients a quick and accurate diagnosis. The question now changes from “What does this patient have?’ to “How are we going to treat them?”


So, when the holiday season rolls around again, pay attention to those lights and remember that when you see Christmas trees ‘doing their job’ this holiday season, think about gene expression and the novel work that is taking place at the Greenwood Genetic Center.


Read more


collect
0
avatar
Greenwood Genetic Center
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more