Mutation Story 

by: Gloria Huang

Part 1:

The Life of a Genetic Mutation

I am a gene inside Jeremy’s body. My name is OPN1LW. My brother OPN1MW, sister OPN1SW, and I produce proteins that play the essential role in color vision. If mutations happen to us, our host might suffer from color vision deficiency which is also called color blindness.

Color blindness is a common hereditary condition which means it is usually passed down from your parents. Red/green color blindness is passed from mother to son on the 23rd chromosome, which is known as the sex chromosome because it also determines sex. The 23rd chromosome is made up of two parts – either two X chromosomes if you are female or an X and a Y chromosome if you are male. The faulty ‘gene’ for color blindness is found only on the X chromosome. So, for a male to be color blind the faulty color blindness ‘gene’ only has to appear on his X chromosome. For a female to be color blind it must be present on both of her X chromosomes. That also means that men have higher possibility than women to have color blindness. Color blindness affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world.

Unfortunately, Jeremy’s mom is a carrier of the “faulty gene” for color blindness. Jeremy has been affected and due to the genetic changes involving the OPN1LW or OPN1MW gene he becomes a red-green color blind.

People who are red-green color blind generally have difficulty distinguishing between reds, greens, browns and oranges. They also commonly confuse different types of blue and purple hues.

Jeremy’s condition causes a lot of problems in his daily life. For Jeremy, he may not able to be a good chef because most red/green color blind people can’t tell if they have cooked the meat rare or well done. Also, they are unlikely to be able to tell the difference between green and ripe tomatoes or bananas. This is because to them, green, yellow, and red are in the same shade that they think they are the same color. Furthermore, Jeremy may not be accepted for the professions that require good color vision in the future, such as, airline pilot, firefighter, and train driver.

Part2

• What questions did you need to research in order to create your mutation story?

What is color blindness? What causes color blindness? How gene mutation cause color blindness? How color blindness affect people’s life? Different kinds of color blindness?

• What new or familiar digital tools did you try to use as you worked through this project?

The familiar tools I used are Google and Youtube. Also, I learned to use creativecommons.org as one of my research tools.

• What was the process you used to investigate the topic?

First, I wrote down the questions I have to search about, and I put down the link of the helpful website. Then I tried to find all the information I need from these websites. And at last I organized the information into the mutation story.

• How did you verify and cite the information I found?

The first thing I will check when I see a website is the suffix. I usually choose the information from the website that has the suffixes of edu, org, and gov. For citation I used the citation machine on the internet.

• How did the process if completing this challenge go? What could you have done better.

I think the process went very well.  However, I want to do something more challenging next time such as make a video or do an interview.

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Citations:

Colour Blindness. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/

Types of Colour Blindness. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2016, from http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/types-of-colour-blindness/

Color vision deficiency. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/color-vision-deficiency#genes

Chromosomes Involved in Color Blindness | Colblindor. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from http://www.color-blindness.com/2006/06/02/chromosomes-involved-in-color-blindness/

Living with Colour Vision Deficiency. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/living-with-colour-vision-deficiency/