New Clues into Stuttering May Be Found in Genes

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Re: genetic linkage

From: Dennis Drayna
Date: 31 Oct 2005
Time: 18:03:43 -0600
Remote Name: 165.112.46.123

Comments

Hi Morgan, We don't know why different families seem to have genes that cause stuttering located on different chromosomes, but we're not surprised. For example, one out of every 1000 children in the U.S. are born deaf, and most of this is due to inherited causes. There seem to be a total of over 100 different deafness genes, and they are located across all the chromosomes. The take-home message is that our hearing requires very complicated structures and functions, which together require the products of at least 100 different genes. Mutations in any one of these lead to the same problem, deafness. We believe the situation in stuttering may well be the same. The universal connection is that they all are required for fluent speech, and a mutation in any one has the same end effect, stuttering.


Last changed: 11/15/05