Why One Gene Alone Does Not Cause Disease
In Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, there is this line: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” When it comes to inherited blindness, the prevailing school of thought is that genetic variants are at fault in cases of inherited blindness. Another school of thought is that modifier genes, in and of […]
Genetics & Their Effects on Eye Disease Part Two
What if it’s a modifier gene that causes problems with vision? What’s so troublesome about a modifier gene? It has a variant, such as a single nucleotide change, that differs from the common sequence. The variant doesn’t cause disease by itself, but it can influence the observable characteristics of a genetic disease through mechanisms that […]