Down Syndrome Research Paper

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Down Syndrome is a common disorder that occurs or caused when person has an extra copy of chromosome 21 in the nucleus of their cells (3 in total). It can also be caused when chromosomes fail to separate during meiosis. People with Down Syndrome would have some degree of mental retardation, a disability of people with below average IQ or mental ability. People with Down Syndrome have physical appearances like low muscle tone, small stature, and upward slanted eyes. About 1 out of every 700 babies in the United States is born with Down Syndrome, making it the most common genetic disorder. The Down’s Syndrome was discovered in the late nineteenth by John Langdon Down, an English Physician. Later on, in 1959, a French physician named Jerome Lejeune identified Down …show more content…
Trisomy 21 is the type of Down Syndrome that is usually caused by in meiosis called disjunction. Nondisjunction results in the extra copy of chromosome 21 when a pair of chromosome 21 in the sperm or egg fails to separate. As the unborn offspring develops, the extra chromosome is copied to every cell of its body. This type of Down Syndrome, trisomy 21, occurs 95% of Down Syndromes inheritances. Another type of Down Syndrome is mosaicism. Mosaicism takes place when there is a combination of two types of cells. One cell has the normal 46 chromosomes and the other have 47 chromosomes (contains the extra chromosome 21). This type of Down Syndrome is the least common type-it is about 1% of all Down Syndrome cases. Research indicates that people with this type of Down Syndrome have less characteristics of the disorder than other types. The last and final type of Down Syndrome is called translocation. In translocation, the chromosomes are the normal 46, but an additional chromosome 21 attaches to another chromosome, usually number 14. The appearance or presence of the chromosome gives the organism the characteristics of Down