Male pattern baldness pinpointed on DNA
A ±«ÓãÖ±²¥ researcher has found a mysterious stretch of DNA that can make men lose their hair. The discovery could lead to new ways to prevent male pattern baldness or a quick genetic test to determine if a man is likely to hang on to his hair. But it also may help researchers better understand the human genome. The section of chromosome 20 that Brent Richards and his colleagues have implicated in baldness isn't a gene. It is in a gene desert, one of the many long stretches of DNA that fill the gaps between the roughly 20,000 genes in the human genome. Genes carry the codes for the proteins that make up our bodies and keep them healthy. But no one knows what the vast tracts of DNA in between them do, says Dr. Richards, an assistant professor of genetic epidemiology at ±«ÓãÖ±²¥ and lead author of a paper published yesterday in the journal Nature Genetics.