ABSTRACT
Roughly one child in a thousand is afflicted with hearing impairment severe enough to potentially compromise the development of normal spoken communication skills. In over one half of these children, an alteration in one or more genes is the primary cause of hearing impairment. The Human Genome Project has provided a rich bounty of resources, including genetic markers, databases of expressed human sequences, comprehensive libraries of clones spanning the human genome, and sequencing of the human genome. These resources make it possible to determine the location of the genes and identify with precision the genetic changes that underly hereditary hearing impairment. Given this unprecedented opportunity to understand the fundamental basis for hereditary hearing impairment, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders gives high priority to research that elucidates the structure, function, and regulation of genes responsible for hereditary hearing impairment.
