Diseases: Sex Linked And Sex Influenced

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Term Paper Title	Diseases: Sex Linked And Sex Influenced
# of Words	2895
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	11.58

Diseases: Sex Linked and Sex Influenced

Diseases: Sex Linked and Sex Influenced

by Richard Nixon
Honors Biology
Mrs. Linda
December 19, 1994

     There are thousands of cases of sex linked and sex influenced diseases
worldwide.  These diseases can range from a social inconvenience, to a fatal
ailment.  In sex linked diseases, like Muscular Dystrophy, hemophilia and color
blindness, only males are affected.  When a man infected with a sex linked
disease has children, all his sons are normal, but all of his daughters are
carriers.  When a carrier woman and an uninfected man have children, half of the
sons are normal, and half of the sons are affected; half of the daughters are
carriers and half of the daughters are normal.  Only males are affected because
the sex linked diseases affect the X chromosome.  Males have one X chromosome
and one Y chromosome, so they need to use that X, whether it is flawed or not.
Females on the other hand, have two X chromosomes, so if one is defective, they
can use their second X chromosome.  Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy(DMD) is
defined as "a genetic disease characterized by defective muscle cells that can
not produce a protein called dystrophins (Science News 380).  In patients of
hemophilia, there is a deficiency of a protein needed for blood clotting,
causing this hereditary bleeding disorder.  In red/green color blindness, the
broadest form of color blindness that affects six percent of the population, the
cones in the retina that receive green light do not function properly.  Unlike
sex linked diseases, sex influenced diseases are not reserved solely for the
male. However, the diseases occur in males much more frequently than in females.
This is because sex influenced diseases occur from imbalances in testosterone,
much more highly concentrated in males.  Baldness and gout are two diseases that
are a result of these hormonal imbalances.  Baldness is defined as the lack or
loss of hair.  Permanent baldness strikes on a hereditary basis because the
hormonal imbalances tend to be passed from generation to generation.  Gout is a
hereditary metabolic disorder that involves recurrent acute attacks of severe
inflamm ation of joints.
     Sex linked diseases are born when sex genes, that compose two of the 46
chromosomes, are mutated by an error in copying genes in reproduction.  One of
these sex linked diseases is Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy.  DMD is a disease
that has rightfully been gaining some headlines recently, as th...

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