Biology Essential Skill Assignment

Disease List List of possible diseases to research: (this is only a small list of diseases -- don’t limit yourself to just the diseases on this list. Feel free to choose a disease of someone you know who has been diagnosed) • Alzheimer’s disease (AD; degenerative dementia) • Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; Lou Gehrig's Disease; progressive motor function loss leading to paralysis and death) • Ataxia telangiectasia (AT; progressive brain disorder resulting in loss of muscle control and cancers) • Breast cancer (make sure you focus on information involving the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes) • Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT; loss of feeling in ends of limbs) • Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH; hormone deficiency; ambiguous genitalia and male pseudohermaphroditism) • Cystic fibrosis (CF; disease of lung and pancreas resulting in thick mucous accumulations and chronic infections) • Duane syndrome (DS; eye movement disorder) • Duchenne muscular dystrophy/Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD; severe to mild muscle wasting, deterioration, weakness) • Dystonia (DYT; muscle rigidity, repetitive twisting movements) • Fanconi anemia, group C (FA; anemia, leukemia, skeletal deformities) • Factor V-Leiden (FVL; blood-clotting disorder) • Fragile X syndrome (FRAX; leading cause of inherited mental retardation) • Gaucher disease (GD; enlarged liver and spleen, bone degeneration) • Hemochromatosis (iron overload in blood) • Hemophilia A and B (HEMA and HEMB; bleeding disorders) • Hereditary hemochromatosis (HFE; excess iron storage disorder) • Huntington's disease (HD; usually midlife onset; progressive, lethal, degenerative neurological disease) • Klinefelter’s syndrome (affects male reproductive system) • Myotonic dystrophy (MD; progressive muscle weakness; most common form of adult muscular dystrophy) • Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1; multiple benign nervous system tumors that can be disfiguring; cancers) • Parkinson’s disease (PD; degeneration of the central nervous system) • Phenylketonuria (PKU; progressive mental retardation due to missing enzyme; correctable by diet) • Adult polycystic kidney disease (APKD; kidney failure and liver disease) • Prader Willi/Angelman syndromes (PW/A; decreased motor skills, cognitive impairment, early death) • Sickle cell disease (SS; blood cell disorder; chronic pain and infections) • Spinocerebellar ataxia, type 1 (SCA1; involuntary muscle movements, reflex disorders, explosive speech) • Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA; severe, usually lethal progressive muscle-wasting disorder in children) • Thalassemias (THAL; anemias - reduced red blood cell levels) • Tay-Sachs disease (TS; fatal neurological disease of early childhood; seizures, paralysis) • Turner’s syndrome (absence of female sex chromosome)