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Your mother suffers from a rare type of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. With this disease, she is in the advanced stages of dementia, although she is only in her 40s. It's a terrifying and desperate illness. Treatments are now only being found.

It's possible that you may have this disease. And it's also possible that you are simply a carrier of the disease. Do you want to know if you will develop the disease, or if you have the potential to pass this genetic disorder on to your children?

Genetic tests are now available that can determine whether you will get the disease. "That particular example is still a rather exotic test," says Fred Bauder. He is the director of a clinical genetics technology program.

"But our technology is allowing us to determine whether people have a genetic disorder or whether they may be carriers for a disease."

A carrier of a disease is someone who is healthy and doesn't exhibit any of the traits of a genetic disorder, but has the potential to pass that disorder on to their children.

Bauder says that tests for diseases such as breast cancer, leukemia and Down syndrome are regularly done by genetic technologists. "For example, in Down syndrome, we do different tests that will find the presence of that extra chromosome that is the cause of the disease."

Genetic technologists also look for single gene mutations. "In this case, you look at a piece of the chromosome at the gene level," he says. "By removing DNA from cells to obtain tests, you can even find out whether someone is a carrier of a disease."

Bauder says this type of diagnosis is important. It can give the public extremely valuable information.

"It's a very powerful thing to tell someone whether they're completely normal for that gene, or whether they're a carrier for that gene," says Bauder.

"If you're a carrier and you marry someone who is also a carrier, the chance of the children being a carrier for the gene jumps to 50 percent. And the chance of the child having the disease is 25 percent."

Cytogenetics is currently used for treatment and diagnosis in several large cancer centers in North America. "It has become in demand as a standard of care for diagnosis and treatment in cancer," says Vicki Hopwood. She is a director of cytogenetics at a cancer center in Houston.

Cytogenetics can test for cancers such as leukemia and lymphomas. In addition, women with breast cancer can find out the likelihood that their cancer will spread to other parts of their body.

"It's an exciting area to work in that can help a great deal of people because of the multiple approaches we can take with the testing," says Hopwood.

Michelle Hess is a genetic technologist in Omaha. She says it's a rewarding career. "You have to be interested in minute detail and have patience," she says.

She enjoys the fact that the job is always changing. "You may be working on the same type of test, but the patient is different or the scenario is different," she says. "The sky's the limit for the types of abnormalities you can find. It's like a great mystery hunt."

She also adds that because the field is changing so rapidly, genetic technologists always have the opportunity to keep learning.

As the population gets older, and as women with careers choose to have children later in life, cytogenetic testing is becoming an important tool. Testing can help a women determine if her reproductive organs and her fetus are healthy.

"There's a recommended screen for women over 35 that can detect many things like neural tube defects," says Hopwood.

Cytogenetics and molecular cytogenetics were first developed 30 years ago. "It's exciting to work in a science that started in the '70s," says Hopwood. "Like other new disciplines, it's always changing."

She says that unlike nursing or other health-care practices that have set standards, the way a cytogeneticist does her work may completely change over a five-year span. "This really is a field for the young," says Hopwood. "It needs young people coming in who have the vision to change along with the science."

Hopwood says there are very few limits on where this field could go in the future. "If people are thinking of careers like in sci-fi fantasies, this is one that has potential to look very different in the future."