Biology - Science - AllExperts.com. Life Science Reference - Biology Online. Biology Websites. The Biology Corner. Scientists Work To Unravel Mystery Behind Woman Who Doesn’t Grow. Twenty year old Brooke Greenberg hasn’t grown since age five. For the last 15 years mystified doctors have been unable to explain the cause for Brooke’s disorder that has kept her aging in check. At age twenty, she maintains the physical and mental appearance of a toddler. Eric Shadt wants to solve this most bizarre of medical mysteries. Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Shadt is leading research to uncover the genetic cause for Brooke’s condition.
Because hormones control many of the maturation processes, one of the first things the research team looked at was to see if Brooke’s own hormone levels might be abnormal. The researchers are now are painstakingly analyzing Brooke’s entire genome in search of unique mutations. Needless to say, it is a formidable undertaking. To find the mutation Shadt and his team are using the latest genome sequencing and analysis tools. New York Genome Center.