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From: Dennis Drayna
Date: 31 Oct 2005
Time: 14:59:43 -0600
Remote Name: 165.112.46.123
Hi Tammy, Thanks for your question. I'm not sure what you mean when you ask whether the inbreeding affects the dominance seen in families. To us geneticists, the term dominance has a very specific meaning, which refers to a mode of inheritance in which one copy of the disease gene is sufficient to cause disease. The inbreeding in the Pakistani families helps bring two copies of the same gene back together in one individual. A model we currently like is one in which one copy of a stuttering gene gives you perhaps a 45% chance of stuttering, while carrying two copies of that gene gives you a 90% chance of stuttering. We don't know if this is true, but the Pakistani families support this idea.