Purpose: In this project we had the chance to take on the roll of a Genetic Counselor, a career that counsels woman and couples who are having a baby or thinking about having a baby. A Genetic Counselor talks to couples about the possibility of having a baby with a genetic disorder as well as how to raise a child with a genetic disorder. Throughout this project, we will learned how to be a genetic counselor and we become the Genetic Counselor for two of our classmates to create a prediction of what their offspring might be like if they were to reproduce with that another member of our team using the laws of genetics.
Reflection: This project was amazing it has challenging but i learned a lot from it. Since biology is my favorite subject I was really engaged during the process and I putted a lot of effort.
Letter to Client
March 2, 2012
Dear Mr. and Mrs. D’ Orsi- Chavez
My name is Paola Yee, and as your genetic counselor, I am responsible of informing you what is happening in your pregnancy. I am going to start by telling you the gender of your baby, you are expecting a male and I am able to know this because i took a look on your baby’s karyotype (it is a picture of his chromosomes) and I was able to notice that there was an ‘’x’’ and a ‘’y’’, chromosome and as you may or may not know if there is an existent ‘’y” chromosome the gender will be male. The mother can only pass on an ‘’x’’ chromosome and the father is the one responsible of determining the sex of the baby because he is capable of either passing down an ‘’x’’ or a ‘’y’’. In your case the father passed on a ‘’y’’ chromosome.
After finding your baby’s gender i went ahead and collected some information that made it possible for me to know which trait your baby will mos likely have. Your baby will have incomplete dominant traits when it comes to hair color, eye color, skin tone and hair texture. Incomplete dominance is a type of inheritance in which one allele (two forms of the same gene) for a specific trait is not completely dominant over the other allele. The result is a combined phenotype (physical trait). The other traits your child will most likely have, they will all be dominant are round nose, free ear lobes, full lips, long eyelashes, thin eyebrows, round eyes, freckles, no dimples because the trait does not appear, and no widows peak.
The karyotype not only serves to determine the baby’s gender, but it can also inform us if there is a non-disjunction in any of the 23 pair of chromosomes. There are two types of non-disjunctions, they can be autosomal meaning that the disorder is in one of the first 22 pairs of chromosomes, or sex linked which can only be in chromosome number 23 which determines gender ‘x or y’. Going to your baby's karyotype I am sorry to inform you that your baby boy has a non disjunction in the fifth chromosome, this is considered an autosomal disorder named cri-du-chat syndrome resulting from an incomplete chromosome. It is named after the french term cat cry or call of the cat, referring to the characteristics of cat like cry of affected children. It is a rare condition that affects an estimated of 1 in 50,000 live births, strikes all ethnicity's and it is more common in females in a 4:3 ratio. This gene is passed in the x chromosome.
The symptoms of cri-du chat- syndrome are the following: feeding problems because of the difficulty of sucking and swallowing, low birth weight and poor growth, severe cognitive, speech and motor delays, behavior problems such as hyperactivity, aggression tantrums and repetitive movements. It may also have unusual features that may change over time.
Another trait I found after doing a pedigree which is a genetic representation of a family tree that diagrams the inheritance of trait or disease through several generations is the ability of rolling the tongue and your child has a very high chance of being able to roll the tongue because it is a trait that it it found in both families but once again the trait can change for that of not being able to roll it because recessive traits tend to skip generation.
It was a pleasure being your genetic counselor, if you have further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.Sincerely Genetic Counselor Paola Yee
