Genetics of Health
Read the questions below.
Read section 7.3, Some Multifactorial Traits, and answer the questions.
1. Multifactorial traits include such common conditions as
a. heart and blood vessel (cardiovascular disease)
b. and obesity____as well as harder to define traits such as
c. _inteligence________________________________and aspects of
d. __________personality___________________________________
e. ___________________mood_____________________________and
f. _______________________behavior_____________________
2. What led to Arthur Ashe’s heart attack? Inherited tendency to deposit lipids
3. How can someone who eats 25 eggs per day enjoy good health? genetics
4. What is the purpose of cellular adhesion molecules? (See fig. 2.21)
the stickiness of white blood cells to walls of blood vessels
a. How do these molecules play a role in genetics of heart health?
ability of blood to clot
5. Define in your own words:
a. lipoprotein-___large molecules composed of proteins and lipids______________
b. apolipoprotein-__large proteins that carry the lipids_________________________
6. __Apolipoprotein E4___________increases the risk of a heart attack 3 fold in people who smoke.
7. Why do doctors and insurance companies ask if you have a family of heart disease?
angiotensinogen is a gene coded enzyme that leads to hypertension
8. A healthy cardiovascular system requires high ___HDL____and low_LDL_________. This s associated
with an enzyme coded for on the chromosome __8___.
9. What is multilocus genotype information? DNA microarrays that focus on specific loci
10. How is it used? testing for many things that affect heart
11. ______1/2______________of all adults in the United States are classified as obese.
12. How is obese defined? 20% or more above ideal weight
13. What is the heritability of body mass index? .55
14. How does leptin work? decreases appetite when eating, released by fat cells
15. Can most people blame their obesity on leptin levels? no
16. Look at fig. 7.13. What led to the cousins both inheriting the recessive allele for low leptin levels?
shared ancestry (incest)
17. What two proteins explain more cases of obesity? Neuropeptide Y and melanocortin-4-receptor
18. How do they work? appetite sensors N4 is the gas for hunger, mc4r is the brake
19. Explain what happened to the Samoans, Pima Indians and the Inuit. lifestyle changes led to higher
weight and obesity.