The era of genoscopy

Gone are the days of horoscopy. Its time for genoscopy. For everyone out there, its wise to compare your genomes rather than horoscopes for compatibility, before marriage. You may end up on the safe side personally, but your kid will be the most affected one. Recently, I worked on some Agrawal patients from India........several of them; each belonging to a different unrelated family. When I looked at their genomes, what I found was interesting. The disease causing mutation was the same in all of them. They harbored the same mutation in one of their genes. This is called a founder mutation; a mutation inherited by several of the descendants form a common ancestor, perhaps long long ago. Even though the parents did not have the disorder, the kids got it, because each of the parent had one of their two copies of the gene mutated. The kids unfortunately inherited the mutated copies of the gene from each parent and ended up having both copies mutated and hence the disorder. Only if the couple got their genomes checked for compatibility, they would have known the risks involved. This is just an example, there are several other examples involving even devastating and fatal disorders. So, BETTER BE CAUTIOUS AND EDUCATED.