Just a regular day

February, 2008

            Today in 7th grade Biology we learned about Human traits and diseases. We learned how they can either be autosomal recessive, sex-linked dominant, sex-linked recessive, and what I found most interesting: autosomal dominant. For autosomal dominant, my teacher conducted an experiment where my whole class performed PTC tasting. I found out that I’m dominant for the gene because I tasted it, and it was gross! Anyway, we also learned about autosomal dominant diseases, like Huntington’s, Achondroplasia, Myotonic dystrophy and a few other ones. I wasn’t so sure why, but Myotonic dystrophy stood out to me the most. Maybe it was because it wasn’t as tragic and deadly as the others and let people live their lives for the most part.  It is a disorder that affects muscles and eventually causes weakness and shrinkage of the muscle tissue. It also affects the brain, eyes and other organs. The person with the disease typically has a hard time relaxing their muscles and letting go of a tight grip. It usually doesn’t affect the person until teenage years or even adulthood, and allows most people to easily walk around for a good portion of their lives.

            I came home from school and got the usual insult from my older brother. This time he told me I looked geeky holding all my schoolwork. I didn’t let it bother me and instead rushed to show my dad the notes I took in class today. I was so excited with this new topic and I knew he could further explain it to me. He told me that my grandfather coincidentally had a mild case of Myotonic dystrophy. Maybe that’s why it stood out to me over the others!