DYSLEXIA has long been thought to have a genetic component. Now researchers may have pinpointed a specific dyslexia gene.
Jeffrey Gruen at Yale University and his colleagues genotyped 536 individuals from 153 nuclear families who had dyslexia. They scoured a region of chromosome 6 that was already associated with dyslexia and found a deletion in a gene called DCDC2, which is expressed in high levels in parts of the brain involved in reading.
Gruen鈥檚 team then studied the gene鈥檚 role during early development in 鈥渒nockout鈥� rats 鈥� ones in which the gene was deliberately impaired. They found that neural cells failed to migrate as they should (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0508591102).
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鈥淐onnecting this to reading is a leap of faith,鈥� says Gruen. 鈥淏ut it would make sense.鈥� He suggests that genetic screening and early intervention might help overcome the disability.
