Sunday, January 13, 2008

Smith/Buchanan family research

My sister-in-law Mary R. Simms is doing extensive research into what she calls "The Smith Family Curse" which is a genetic hearing loss suffered by many members of our extended family. In the last six months Mary has contacted numerous cousins and second cousins, many she has not seen or heard from in decades. Part of the reason for her reaching out to these cousins is to get to know them better and to share family facts, photos, and stories. But she has another reason too. She has asked them to complete a questionaire about that the status of their hearing, whether or not they wear hearing aids, and if they have an audiogram to copy and send to her. Mary plans to compile all this information and submit it to an expert in the field of genetics, particularly the genetics of audiology. We suspect this affliction came into the family from the Buchanan aka Buckhanan aka Buckhannon line. We welcome input from any Buchanans out there interested in this topic.

1 comment:

DNACousins said...

Hi,

My co-author Megan Smolenyak drew my attention to your blog entry, as she knows of my interest in hereditary hearing loss. My family has an autosomal dominant condition, which is detectable in childhood and progresses gradually with age. We have participated in genetic studies, but the responsible gene has not been identified in our family.

There are dozens of different genes that have been identified. This brochure is a good overview:

http://hearing.harvard.edu/

If you'd like to discuss this further, you can contact me DNACousins@aol.com

Ann Turner
co-author (with Megan Smolenyak) of "Trace Your Roots with DNA"