Basic Genetics for Children

[INTRO SLIDE]

INTRO TO GENETICS for kids. Mikayla Jennings, MS, CGC. Presented by [Shriners Children's logo, Greenwood Genetic Center logo]

Hi, my name is Mikayla Jennings and I’m a clinical genetic counselor at the Greenwood Genetic Center. I’m here to talk to you today about genetics and how genetic testing can give us important information about your health.

[an illustration of a human cell labeled "cell", followed by an illustration of a DNA strand labeled "DNA"]

So, what do we mean when we talk about genetics? Your body is made up of cells. Every cell in your body has genetic information called DNA. You can think of your DNA as a special set of instructions that tells your body how to grow, develop and function. These instructions contain everything that makes you who you are: from your eye color, to your hair color, to even what health problems you may have. Our genetic information is passed down from our parents to us. This is how we inherit traits like eye color or hair color from our parents.

[*Eye Color and *Hair Color are displayed]

The DNA or instructions are like a recipe book. Within the recipe book, you will find what we call genes. We can think of genes as the sentences of the book, or the actual recipes that tell our body how to function. Many of these genes play important roles in keeping us healthy. It is important that the instructions are written clearly in a way that the body can understand.

Your doctor would like to order genetic testing for you to possibly identify a cause or explanation for your medical history. Genetic tests read the sentences of the recipe book to detect specific types of genetic changes that can give us important information about your health. Different types of genetic tests look for different types of genetic changes. Whole Genome Sequencing is a specific type of test that looks for spelling errors in the words that make up the sentences in our recipe book. This test also looks for small missing or extra pieces of the recipe book, like extra or missing sentences. This test looks for these types of changes, so we can understand how your genetics might be impacting how your body functions.

[ the word "RED" pointing to "RDD]

[the phrase "The car was red." pointing to the phrase "The__was red."

We all have changes in our DNA that make us who we are. This specific test is looking for any changes that might impact your health. This could give us information about the cause of a symptom you have, or it could tell us about other health concerns to look out for in the future.

[The word "Positive" is highlighted]

There are three types of results we can get back from the genetic test. The first is a positive result, which means that we found a genetic change in your recipe book that either explains your symptoms or is likely to impact your health in some way.

[The word "Negative" is highlighted]

We can also get a negative result. This means the lab looked through your recipe book and didn’t find any changes that we think are causing problems. If your test is normal but your doctor suspects there is something more to be learned, they may want to order a different type of genetic test.

[The word "Uncertain" is highlighted]

Finally, this test can identify uncertain results. This means that the lab found a change in your recipe book, but we don’t know if this is an explanation for your medical history, or not, as we all have changes in our recipe book that make us who we are.

The results of this test may help your doctor to better treat your medical conditions and provide important information about your health.

We hope this helped you learn a little more about genetics and genetic testing with whole genome sequencing. Ultimately, our goal with this testing is to better understand you and your health and to help others understand how genetics may be impacting their health as well. We appreciate you taking the time to learn more and encourage you to ask your doctor at Shriners Children’s Hospital if you have any questions. 

Brought to you in partnership by [Shriners Children's logo] [Greenwood Genetic Center logo]