Family Studies

Our groundbreaking research into the genetics of dyslexia continues apace! With your help, we’ve now studied over 300 families in which at least one child is dyslexic.

From the data we’ve gathered, the latest results were exciting enough for our paper to be published in the very prestigious journal Nature Genetics. As well as confirming previous findings (in particular, a linkage to chromosome 6 that now looks very robust, and has also been independently linked to ADHD in other studies), we’ve now found a new site on chromosome 18 that shows even stronger linkage to dyslexia.

Three things about this new finding are particularly notable:

1) This is the very first time that the whole genome has been studied (rather than just one or two pre-defined regions)

2) Chromosome 18 has never before been linked with dyslexia, but the same region was independently identified in both our UK families and another set of families from America.

3) Chromosome 18 has relatively few genes, making the search for the gene located here hopefully easier.

Of course, this is only one of several genetic sites now linked with dyslexia, and no-one thinks there will be just one gene involved. Furthermore no actual genes have yet been identified—but that day may not be long away now!