Interviewee: Mark Skolnick. Using pedigrees to study inherited cancer.

So this family shows a person at the top, their descendents, marriage, their descendents, the next generation, the next generation, the next generation – and each color is a different chromosome that we see traveling through the family. So this person started with chromosomes that were colored red and yellow. The red didn't go to either child – they were both yellow – but following the yellow down here this person brought in what we've colored grey and green, and you can see the grey going over here and the green going over here. And the black indicates that that person is affected with the disease that's under study. So we try to see a pattern where the colors of a chromosome follow the people who are affected in the pedigree. In this case it looks like yellow is following with these affected cases. Nobody is affected down in this generation because this is prostate cancer, it's a late age onset cancer so the earlier generations are not affected. And again there's further generations below this that we haven't even drawn on the diagram. This is just a piece of a family which again in Utah these are huge, most other groups would have a small drawing like this and this is just the part that we've studied.

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