- 11/02/2013
- Posted by: essay
- Category: Free essays
“The Founder effect” is rather new term, which became popular after the recent discoveries in genetics. Shortly speaking, this term describes the influence of genetic characteristics on the posterity in the partly or completely isolated group. The effect of founders can be traced as in human groups as in the groups of animals.
Founder effect
Medical Dictionary online defines the founder effect as following:
“The positive effect on gene frequency when a population (a colony) has only a small number of original settlers (founders) one or more of whom had that gene. (MD online)”
Thus, when the new colony was started by the small group, this colony can have the reduced gene variation and a non-random sample of genes.
Thus, the small community in the northwest of Venezuela can serve the illustration on founder effect. In the Lake Maracaibo region was registered the abnormally high frequency of a Huntington’s disease. This disease is a degenerative nerve disorder, which can be inherited genetically. Local researches studied this extraordinary case and found that all the 150 people with Huntington disease are the descendants of woman named Maria Concepciуn Soto.
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She moved to this region in the 19th century and had a lot of children. So, she can be considered as a “founder” of the human population in this region. Now the amount of her descendants reaches 20,000 people and all of them have the high risk of Huntington development. 150 registered cases on 20,000 make the 0,7%, and this number is ten times higher than the average percent of a Huntington’s cases in the USA (0,07%).
The effect of founder can be reflected in the different genetic markers. The research of this issue can be useful in the medicine as well.
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