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Friday, September 23, 2005Healthy people have 23 pairs of chromosomes and Down's syndrome occurs when an extra copy of chromosome 21 is inherited by mistake. The surplus genes seem to interact with other parts of the genome to trigger health problems. In the past, research has been hampered by a lack of adequate animal models. Mouse models are available, but they do not mimic Down's well, as the genes found in the human chromosome 21 are scattered across several chromosomes in mice. ....The team, whose results were published yesterday in the journal Science, added a complete human chromosome 21 to mouse embryonic stem cells, which were then merged with mouse embryos. Some of these then gave rise to mice that carried 92 per cent of the added human chromosome. These mice, known as Tc1, have memory and learning deficits similar to those seen in people with Down's. posted by Sydney on 9/23/2005 11:41:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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