Researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) and Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) have discovered a possible genetic mechanism behind congenital heart defects. This finding has implications for understanding how congenital heart defects occur, and may lead to genetic tests for certain defects, such as proteins that determine how genes are expressed. This also opens new insights into how general chromosome properties can relate to specific disease processes. This research is reported in the November 4, 2004 issue of the scientific journal Nature.