Many variants seem to have no effects at all, others may increase your risk of developing a disease. Not all gene variants cause a genetic condition. These sickle cell haemoglobin genes cause red blood cells to be the wrong shape, making it hard for them to carry oxygen around the body. Hemoglobin helps your red blood cells carry oxygen around your body. People with this illness have a variant in the genes that contain instructions to make haemolglobin proteins. One genetic condition is called sickle cell anemia. Scientists have identified over 10,000 genetic conditions. As a result genetic conditions usually run in families. Geneti c conditions: Genetic conditions are diseases you develop when you inherit a variant in a gene from your parents. Play our Gene Finder game to see if you can spot the variant genes.įUN FACT : blood group O, which is useful because it can be transfused into anyone in an emergency, is caused by a variant in the gene ABO that stops it working (a knockout ). But a few variants do affects proteins that do really important things in your body, and then you can become ill. Luckily most gene variants have no effect on health. Occasionally, this may causes the gene to give cells different instructions for making a protein, so the protein works differently. A variant means the gene has slightly different instructions to the usual version. Sometimes, one or a few bases of the DNA in a gene can vary between people. How do genes affect your health? Your genes are the instruction manual that makes your body work. For example if your mum has brown-eye and blue-eye genes she could pass the blue ones on to you and the brown ones on to your sibling. When they pass their genes on to you they only pass on one of these versions, and it is completely random which one it will be. Why are you different from your brothers and sister? The reason you and your siblings aren’t identical is because your mum and dad have two versions of each gene, one from each of their parents.
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