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"Thirteen Anonymous Genetic Superheroes Walk Among Us"

  • The Atlantic
  • New York, NY
  • (April 11, 2016)

There are 13 people who do not know that they each inherited a gene that causes fatal or debilitating diseases in childhood—they all lived to be healthy adults. Their DNA may hold clues to treating others who did not escape the gene’s effects. That is the conclusion of a paper, published Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology, in which researchers searched databases containing genetic sequences from nearly 600,000 healthy adults and found these remarkable 13. Now, researchers Stephen Friend, MD, PhD, and his colleagues, Eric Schadt, PhD, and Jason Bobe, MSc, are beginning the next phase of their project, which they call the Resilience Project. Learn more.