Fw: Gene for Speech Identified
John W. Jacobson
the following:
John Jacobson
----------
> From: FEAT <fe...@feat.org>
> To: FEAT...@LIST.FEAT.ORG
> Subject: Gene for Speech Identified
> Date: Saturday, August 07, 1999 4:33 PM
>
>
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> ____________________________________________________________
> Gene for Speech Identified
> Saturday, August 07, 1999
>
> [The finding may lead to novel treatments for people with impaired
> speech, perhaps even for people with autism. From MS-NBC.]
>
> A family plagued by an inability to make themselves understood has
led
> to the first proof of a gene controlling human speech, researchers said
> Monday.
> The gene, dubbed Speech1, "is definite confirmation and first
evidence
> of a real gene involved in language development," said study author
Anthony
> Monaco, a geneticist at Oxford University in Britain.
> "It means that genes are probably heavily involved in the ability to
> acquire language," he said.
> Experts have long said humans are "hard wired" to acquire language,
and
> the area of the brain involved, known as the planum temporale, has been
> identified.
> Children who get no language input - for instance profoundly deaf
> children who are never taught sign language - still make up their own
> languages, with grammar and sentence structure.
> Monaco, who also helped map the gene for muscular dystrophy, set out
to
> see how genes might be involved in language. His team worked with a
family
> with a history of language disorders.
> "They have two different language problems - one is in articulation
of
> speech. They are very hard to understand."
> The condition is known as motor dyspraxia. "It's a fancy word for
not
> being able to get the words out and be intelligible," said Monaco, who
> reported the findings in the journal Nature Genetics.
> "The separate problem is that their speech is very rudimentary - it
> isn't developed according to the age the child should be. They don't
achieve
> the milestones at the age they should, for instance getting tenses and
> grammar wrong."
>
> MULTIGENERATIONAL STUDY
> The investigators followed three generations of a family in which
half
> of the members have a severe disruption of language, making their speech
> incomprehensible.
> Studying the genetic makeup of 27 family members, the researchers
> localized the gene to a narrow region on chromosome 7. The actual gene,
> however, has not yet been pinpointed.
> Now Monaco's team trying to determine if there is a mutation of the
> gene, or perhaps a deletion, in which large pieces of genetic matter are
> simply missing in people with speech disorders.
> The effects are particularly strong in this one British family, but
> Monaco said speech disorders like theirs, on a smaller scale, affect up
to 2
> percent of schoolchildren.
> "What we hope is if we can understand the gene, it can tell us more
> about the process on which language is built," he said.
> Monaco is doing a larger study with 100 families whose members have
> speech disorders. He suspects there could be a link with autism, which
> causes victims to withdraw, and dyslexia, which causes people to have
> trouble reading.
> "Lots of children with language problems go on to have reading
> problems," he said. "We just did a screen for autism and to our surprise
we
> found the same region of chromosome seven."
> This might not mean anything but the researchers were checking
further,
> Monaco said.____________________________________________________________
> editor: Lenny Schafer east coast editor: Catherine Johnson, Ph.D.
> sch...@sprynet.com CIJ...@aol.com
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