Genome 5th Entry

"Sex"
Ridley begins the chapter with describing a portrait of an obese five year old child named Eugenia Martinez Vallejo. He says that the child is 'enormous for her age' he tells the reader that she has tiny hands and feet, followed by strange looking eyes and mouth. He later reveals that the child is diagnosed with Prader-Willi syndrome, a patient when young would lack appetite but when grows older, he/she would eat almost everything that is edible. Doctors notice that these syndromes are related to family and are being inherited. In Prader and Angelman's syndrome, they both have a missing piece in chromosome number 15. Prader syndrome is cause by a missing chunk of information from the father chromosome, while for the Angelman syndrome is caused by a missing chunk of genes from the mother's side of the chromosome. Then Ridley moves on to talk about the cloning of a sheep named Dolly. It seems that cloning would erase all imprints from the brain, but the organism itself can still survive. The mother's genes control the development of the cerebral cortex, which is the thinking part and the father's genes control the development of the hypothalamus, the mood of the father.