Essay On Eye Diseases

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Eye Mutations

Abnormal changes in the DNA of a gene are called mutation. Mutations involve alterations in the arrangement of the bases that create up a gene. The sequence of the bases regulates the gene and its function. Gene mutations can cause great changes in the function of a gene.
Human eye disease is common. Around 50 million people worldwide are assessed to be blind and three times that number has important visual impairment. With increasing longevity in developed countries the impact of late-onset ocular diseases including cataract, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration is becoming more substantial (Taylor, 2001) and a high proportion of cases of blindness or visual impairment is due to genetic factors (Gilbert, 1995). Mice carrying mutations causing eye defects provide useful models of human eye disease. The mouse eye has many similarities to the human eye and so, it may help identify the disease genes involved as well as aiding assessment of therapeutic treatments. Visual impairment does not generally harmfully affect the fitness of laboratory mice and animals with eye …show more content…

Professor Eiberg stated that from this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor. They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA. Brown-eyed individuals, by contrast, have extensive individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production.Professor Eiberg and his team observed mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye pigment of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. His findings are the latest in a decade of genetic research, which began in 1996, when Professor Eiberg first involved the OCA2 gene as being responsible for eye

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