Explore the National Academy of Science gene testing links. Read about the Food and Drug Administration's role in human gene therapy. Learn about the human genome in a past issue of Chemical and Engineering News. Heart disease runs in your family, your father died from it, and so did his father. In the future, predictive genetic tests with the potential to uncover an individual's susceptibility to specific diseases might be available, arming patients and their doctors with the information they need to provide targeted preventive healthcare.
Every child has a genetic blueprint equally contributed to by each parent.
This blueprint will determine such characteristics as eye color and height, but it will also influence the likelihood that they will be susceptible to a hereditary mutation, or inherited disease, at some point in their lives. The human body contains countless numbers of cells, each of which contains a nucleus. Within the nucleus are chromosomes that contain DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, genetic material unique to each individual. There are 46 chromosomes in each human cell consisting of 44 autosomal pairs and 2 sex chromosomes. Each parent contributes 23 chromosomes, each of which contains thousands of genes.