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Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität, München
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Institution(s)
Research: Yale Child Health Research Center
Mentor: J. Gruen, M.D.
Clinical: None
Mapping of dyslexia gene.
Over 2.5 million U.S. children suffer from dyslexia. It effects their school performance, behavior, learning potential, and socio-eoonomic status. Children with dyslexia have a lack of rapid naming, phonemic awareness, orthographic coding and phonological decoding. Since dyslexia is a multiple caused disease, different genes are responsible for it. Genetic linkage for patients with phonemic awareness to markers on human chromosome 6p21 has been found. Phonemic awareness is the lack of ability to split words into the individual sound components. There are two hypothesis for phonemic awareness: GABA B receptor defect or a single gene disorder in region 6p21. Our lab is looking for the gene location of phonemic awareness. The searching for a gene is like looking for an individual on this planet.
Our lab has already identified the country and the city, and my task is to localize the street in which this "person" lives. I am using different molecular biological methods, like subcloning of genes in bacterial chromosomes (E. coli), different PCR reaction, and southern blot. Most probably I will finish assigning all the BACs (bacterial artificial chromosomes) to the chromosome region which is believed to contain the gene for phonemic awareness, using different DNA markers. BACs are plasmid DNA with an insert of human DNA (average size: 100-180 kilo bas pairs). A human gene has an average size of 10 kbp. According to the hypothesis it is a lot of work to do in order to get the single mutation which causes phonemic awareness.
I have been in the U.S. a few times before and therefore was a little bit familiar with the life style and philosophy in the U.S. What impresses me the most is the independent life style and the openness for new ideas. I think that the United States is still the country with the unlimited possibilities. I think you can come here, having nothing and getting everything, if you really work hard for it. On the other hand, the U.S. has an extreme polarization of the society which does not exist in this way in Europe (e.g. the poorest, most of them black, and the very rich people).
I think my greatest difdficulty was always to find the right accommodation. Most big cities in the U.S. have a "good" and a "bad" area. I can't think about any other difficulties different from Germany.
The funniest and in the same time bad thing that happened to me was as follows: One of the BMEP students who is with us in Yale met me and my girlfriend, who had just arrived, in the lift. He was completely drunken and asked me in German " Which of your new girlfriends is this?". When we came to my room I saw a message on my door written by a friend, in Spanish, who was looking for me: "With which of the girls are you having a good time tonight?" (restrained translation of that sentence). Unfortunately my girlfriend can speak Spanish and German. It was very hard for me to explain to her that the guys from the BMEP were only joking.
Try to get a social security number as soon as possible. It is a magic key for everything!