What has been Mendel's Contribution to Medicine Essay

What has been Mendel's Contribution to Medicine - Essay Example When these new genes are arranged in the chromosomes, there is possibility that they arrange in an order where two genes with opposing properties (like tall and short) may come to stay near each other, and these are known as alleles. It is being increasingly recognized that all human characters including diseases are determined by genes, and chromosomes are not identical, and they have specific locations for individual genes. Applying the same genetic principles, alleles in a chromosome locus or position may be held responsible since diseases are either expression of genetic reactions in the body or expression of environmental factors like bacteria or toxins on the human cells.Most human genetic disorders are determined by recessive allele. Presence of dominant and recessive alleles was first determined by Gregor Mendel. Normal alleles usually are dominant and mutant alleles, recessive. In this way, the chances of an offspring being affected by a disease can be predicted by the study of the alleles of the parents. This process has lead to the concept of genetic counseling; Medicine owes this to mendelian principles since genetic counseling is totally based upon mendelian genetics and probability rules. The development of this process involves analysis of fetal samples by amniocentesis in a pregnant mother (Audesirk, T. and Audesirk, G, 1996). Alkaptonuria is a genetic disorder where dysmetabolism is noticeable by discoloration of urine when exposed to air, and these children would have died prematurely with brain disorders. The gene therapy for this disease was easily discovered when it was found that this disease is... gene n."The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Eleventh edition revised . Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.British Council Delhi.29 April 2007