Howard Hughes Medical Institute Holiday Lecture Series - Of Hearts and Hypertension: Blazing Genetic Trails - Lecture Two - Telltale Genes: Charting Human Disease by Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D. Lecture 2 of 4.
Christine E. Seidman, M.D. is an HHMI Investigator at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D is an HHMI Investigator at Yale University.
Some families inherit an increased susceptibility for developing diseases that affect the cardiovascular system, either by directly attacking the heart or by damaging the kidney, which is important in regulating blood pressure. Studying cases where a disease "runs in the family" can yield molecular clues to the underlying biology and offer insights into treatment that may even apply to noniherited forms of the disease.
In four exciting lectures, two leading physician-scientists discuss thie rgroundbreaking work in using genetic and molecular appraoches to understand cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Christine E. Seidman explains how heart circulation works and discusses her research in identifying the mutant genes that cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a sometimes fatal disorder chracteriszed by extreme thickening of the ventricular muscle.
Dr. Richard P. Lifton describes positional cloning, a technique that has identified many disease-causing genes. He explains that hypertension, or high blood pressure, which can contribute to heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure, has been linked to mutations in genes that regulate the retention of salt in the kidney.