Autosomal Dominant Disease

Disease caused when an individual inherits a disease-causing mutation in one copy of a gene pair.

In an autosomal dominant disease, the affected person inherits one mutated gene copy from one biological parent and one normal gene copy from the other biological parent. These genes lie on one of the 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes [the non-sex chromosomes (not X or Y); see Autosome] that are inherited from biological parents. A larger number of the identified disease-causing genes found so far are from dominant diseases, since there is normally an affected person in every generation.