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A genetic disorder, or genetic disease is a disease caused, at least in part, by the genes of the person with the disease. There are a number of possible
causes for genetic defects:
- They may be caused by an unwelcome mutation, as are most cancers.
- There are genetic disorders caused by the accidental duplication of a chromosome, as in Down syndrome and Klinefelter's syndrome, or repeated duplication of part of a
chromosome as in Fragile X syndrome.
- The defective genes are often inherited from the person's parents. In this case, the genetic disorder is known as a
hereditary disease. This can often happen unxpectedly when two healthy carriers of a defective recessive gene reproduce, but can also happen when the defective gene is
dominant.
Genetic disorders are frequently due to the change of a single DNA base in a gene, resulting in an enzyme or other protein either not being produced or having altered functionality. This can be trivial and
relatively harmless in its effects, such as color blindness, or
lethal such as Tay-Sachs. Other disorders, though harmful to those afflicted with
them, appear to offer some advantage to carriers; as in carriers of sickle cell anemia and thalassaemia appearing to
have enhanced resistance to malaria.
Several hereditary diseases are sex-linked, meaning that they afflict one
sex much more common than the other because the mutation is located on the X (or, rarely, on the Y) chromosome.
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