Discover magazine lists gene discovery on Williams syndrome as one of the top science stories of 1996

The January, 1997 issue of Discover magazine list its choices of "The Top 100 Science Stories" for 1996. Under the Genetics section on page 36, it lists nine "Genes of 1996." One of them reads as follows:

"Williams syndrome sufferers have relatively good language skills, but they often have problems with regards to spatial tasks - they have trouble building a model from a diagram, for instance. That specific disability was traced in 1996 to a missing gene on chromosome 7, which codes for a protein involved in brain development. People with Williams lack several other genes on the same chromosome."

Commenting on this announcement, Dr. Howard Lenhoff of the University of California, Irvine, who has a daughter, Gloria, with Williams syndrome, reports that his colleagues at the National Institute of Health tell him that there has been a significant increase in the number of applications for research grants proposing to search for and identify more of the genes absent from chromosome 7 in people with Williams syndrome.