发布时间：2008-01-06 来源：中国翻译人才网 发布者：上海翻译公司
LONDON (Reuters)By Patricia Reaney - British scientists said on Wednesday they have identified the first language gene in a breakthrough that could help to explain how language and speech develop in humans. Called FOXP2, the gene produces a protein that turns other genes on and off. Scientists believe it could hold the key to why people suffer from speech problems.
"We have identified a way of getting at the pathways and neural networks involved in speech and language from a genetics point of view," Simon Fisher, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics in Oxford, said in a telephone interview. Because FOXP2 works with other genes and proteins, Fisher and his colleagues believe its identification could help unlock the molecular mysteries of speech.