Question: If a human carries a disease, would their child/ children develop that gene?

Marisol Collins answered on 10 Nov 2016:

Great question, Charlotte. There are lots of diseases that parents can pass to their children in their genes, but it isn’t quite that simple! The ways that we inherit our genes from our parents means that it is not always certain that we would get a disease, even if one or both of them had the gene for it. As you know, genes contain a set of instructions for the body, and genes are stacked up in a set of chromosomes in each cell. We have two copies of each chromosome, having inherited one copy from each of our parents. We can end up with a damaged gene in any chromosome, either by inheriting it from one or both of our parents, or sometimes a new damage occurs, called a mutation. Wether we get a disease then depends on whether we get a copy of the damaged gene from one or both our parents if they have it, or wether one ‘dominant’ gene overpowers another. It is even more complex that that, but the answer would be too long! You will learn more about this exciting stuff in biology!