Speak out!
researchers have recently discovered a gene which when it mutates causes speech breakdown. The gene switches other genes on and off and, therefore, could show the way for understanding the genetic network of language learning and use. The gene, called foxp 2, was identified by a team of researchers from the University of Oxford in the uk .
This genetic find emerged while researchers were studying several members of a British family who had a severe speech and language disorder. In the so-called ke family, 15 of the 37 members across four generations had low verbal and spatial intelligence, difficulties in pronouncing a wide range of sounds and grammatical deficits such as failing to grasp rules for forming the past tense of verbs. "The affected members of the ke family display a substitution of a single nucleotide in one of their two copies of the foxp 2 gene. This is the reason behind all their problems,' says study co-author Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, a neuroscientist at the Institute of Child Health in London.
The team had been studying the ke family for several years. By 1998, they had ascertained that its problems were due to mutation in a gene of chromosome 7. Data from the human genome project suggested that there were about 70 genes in the chromosome. "For a long time, we kept marching down the chromosome using genetic markers to narrow down the gene, but could not make much progress,' says Cecilia S L Lai, a geneticist at the Oxford University and the lead author of the study.
They made a breakthrough after a boy with similar difficulties turned up. Comparing the two, the team was able to identify the gene since it was also mutated in the boy termed as
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