Clue to Downs syndrome

Press, 30 December 1980, Page 5

Clue to Downs syndrome

NZPA-Reuter San Francisco Researchers at the University of California say they have used genetic splicing to create mice with birth defects resembling the human Downs syndrome, advancing efforts to study the disorder also known as mongolism. The husband and wife team of Dr Charles Epstein and Dr Lois Epstein fused the embryo of a normal mouse with one containing an abnormal chromosome, producing live mice with birth defects similar to those of the Downs syndrome. The Epsteins, professors of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, say the process allows .them to study the cells during their development. Fusion of the abnormal chromosomes with normal ones was necessary because mice embryos with abnormalities had died earlier, they said. Downs syndrome, which involves mental retardation and increased susceptibility to infections, is . linked to an extra chromosome within a developing foetus. That chromosome includes a gene which produces interferon, a protein which seems to attack viruses but which also seems to hamper the ability of white blood cells to attack other infections.