Living with Trisomy By Jemel Nelson Imagine living life with a chromosome disorder. Picture your life looking different Imagine living life where than your peers.
made up of DNA tightly coiled many times around proteins called histones that support its structure. If unraveled apart they would stretch 6 feet in length. Each chromosome has a constriction point called the centromere, which divides the chromosome into two sections, or “arms.” The short arm of the chromosome is labeled the “p arm.” The long arm of the chromosome is labeled the “q arm.” The location of the gives centromere the on each its chromosome chromosome
walking, breathing, sitting up, and something as simple as eating or drinking is a challenge. Visualize your life with everybody staring at you because you are special. The possibilities of being born with a cell mutation are higher than you would expect, but on that same token less likely due to percentages. 50 to 30 percent of women with Trisomy 21 are fertile and they have about a 50% risk of having a child with Down syndrome1. With my topic being Trisomy, it is difficult to relate to normal Anatomy and Physiology of a particular organ affected by this abnormal chromosome mutation because it is not a disease but yet a defect. With that being said if the chromosome pairs fail to separate properly during cell division in the egg (female) or the sperm (male) and the cell may end up with an extra copy of one chromosome. Trisomy is the condition of having three copies of a given chromosome or chromosome segment in each somatic cell rather than two—the normal number. Trisomy is an abnormality in chromosomal development. Chromosomes are the threadlike structures within a cell that carry our genetic information. Each chromosome is
characteristic shape, and can be used to help describe the location of specific genes2. They are organized in 23 pairs. total of 46 chromosomes. Next, a majority of organisms that reproduce sexually have pairs of chromosomes in each cell which are inherited from their parents. This explains why children inherit some of their traits from their mother and others from their father. This process is called meiosis that will create cells called gametes, which are the eggs and/or sperm that only have one set of each parent’s chromosomes. The mutation of these cells is a possible outcome disorder. For example, Trisomy 16 is estimated to occur in more than 1% of pregnancies, making it the most common Trisomy in humans.3 affec B??6?&???6??R?F?R6V??&??&??G??G&?6??6?V6?GW?6FVB?V??2?fR??6?&???6??R?WFF????2v?fV?F?R??R?`???