Century

15/11/13 is a Significant Date.

Bear with me, and I’ll explain. Prader-Willi Syndrome is caused by a spontaneous alteration on chromosome 15. A little missing stripe. If you want to get all technical about it, geneticists label this region 15q11-q13. There are also two other chromosome disorders which have the same genetic alteration (Angelman's Syndrome and Dup15q) and which share some, but not all of the characteristics of Prader-Willi.*

Because this 15q11-q13 number resembles the date 15/11/13, which of course only rolls around once a century, the International Prader-Willi Syndrome Organisation and other people and groups involved with PWS used it to try to further awareness of the syndrome. Fundraising events were organised; blog posts posted; T-shirts printed; conversations started.

Today, of course, is the 16th. So I managed to mark the significant date of 15/11/13, which, if you recall, only comes around every 100 years, by remembering it 24 hours too late. I blame my poor organisational skills, which don’t have anything to do with any missing stripes on particular chromosomes, and are entirely due to me being a numpty.

See you back here next century then? Stick it in your diary - but good luck with scrolling through your smartphone’s calender to get to 3013...

*Click here to go to the IPWSO website page featuring a very clear diagram explaining the connections between the three 'chromosome 15 deletion' disorders.

Song is Blur - End Of A Century