Genetic Linkage in Neurologic Diseases

Abstract
Until recently, the hope of identifying genes associated with dominant inherited neurologic disorders seemed remote. Now that has changed. The powerful techniques of molecular biology have provided methods for locating, by linkage analysis, the genes responsible for several of these diseases and for using the same techniques for presymptomatic or prenatal diagnosis of carriers of the abnormal genes. DNA polymorphisms were first identified in the β-globin gene family less than 10 years ago.1 During the past four years, restriction-fragment–length polymorphisms (RFLPs) have been found with use of DNA probes that reside near the gene locus implicated in Huntington's disease2 (chromosome . . .