Disorders that disrupt the development of speech, language, or reading have substantial effects on social function. Researchers have implicated specific genetic variants in monogenic speech disorder,1 common language impairments,2,3 and dyslexia.4 With the report by Kang and colleagues in this issue of the Journal,5 stuttering joins the fray. Stuttering is a disorder in which speech fluency can...

Atherosclerosis is a complex multifocal arterial disease involving interactions of multiple genetic and environmental factors. Advances in techniques of molecular genetics have revealed that genetic ground significantly influences susceptibility to atherosclerotic vascular diseases. Besides further investigations of monogenetic diseases, candidate genes, genetic polymorphisms, and susceptibilit...

In the context of space radiation, it is important to know whether the human population includes genetically predisposed radiosensitive subsets. One possibility is that haploinsufficiency for ATM confers radiosensitivity, and this defect involves 1-3% of the population. Using knock-out mice we chose to study cataractogenesis in the lens and oncogenic transformation in mouse embryo fibroblasts t...

The dynamics of genetic variation in susceptibility to insecticides within a natural population of Drosophila melanogaster (Meigen) at Katsunuma (Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan) was examined. Two resistance factors for three organophosphate insecticides (OPs), a resistant-type acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase (cytochrome P450), have already been suggested to be invol...

Pulmonary hypertension syndrome (ascites) is a metabolic disorder in fast-growing broilers. Inconsistency of oxygen requirement and the cardiovascular ability make the birds susceptible to ascites. Incidence of ascites was accompanied by right ventricular hypertrophy, fluid accumulation in the abdominal cavity and finally mortality. The objective of the current study was to review the genetic b...

Background and objectives: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease with a complex genetic background. The protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 22 (PTPN22) is a lymphoid specific protein tyrosine phosphatase which is involved in negative regulation of T cell response. Several studies have assessed the association between PTPN22 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with RA ...