I am the Down Syndrome Gene Mutation and this is my story. Human cells normally contain 23 pairs of chromosomes. One chromosome in each pair comes from your father, the other from your mother. I (Down Syndrome) happen when abnormal cell division involving chromosome 21 occurs. 95% of the time, I occur because of Trisomy 21 where the child has three copies of chromosome 21 (instead of the usual two copies) in all cells. This is caused by abnormal cell division during the development of the sperm cell or the egg cell. The effects I can cause to someone are flat facial features, small head and ears, short neck, bulging tongue, eyes that slant upward, oddly shaped ears, and poor muscle tone. My host will attend school and contribute to society like any other human and the age expectancy for my host is 60.

To get my information I had to ask: What are the symptoms of Down Syndrome, how is Down Syndrome caused, what are people with Down Syndromes life’s like. The digital tools I used for this was simply google to find information. The process I used to investigate the topic was to gather everything I know about Down Syndrome, then look up what I didn’t know, and research it. The process to completing this story was fun and helped me learn much more about Down Syndrome than I did before.