What is happening with genetic research?
Research into the genetics of psoriasis didn’t begin until the early 1970s. Recently, it has exploded in scope, thanks to improvements in medical and genetic technology, and increased funding. In 2006, the Foundation began collecting DNA samples for the National Psoriasis Victor Henschel BioBank. The BioBank is slated to be the world’s largest collection of psoriasis-related DNA in the world available to qualified researchers. The predecessor to the BioBank was the National Psoriasis Tissue Bank. Launched in 1994, it was the first public source of genetic material for researchers investigating psoriasis. Just weeks after it opened, a research team from the University of Texas Southwestern and Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas announced the first genetic marker (a section of DNA that tracks with a disease) for psoriasis on chromosome 17. If a marker exists in families with a genetic disease, the marker and the disease gene are said to be “linked,” meaning they are located quite
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