Three years later it isolated the BRCA1 gene, a segment of DNA that marks 600, 000 American women with a greater than one-in-two chance of developing breast cancer.

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Sangamo scientists have engineered a library of 10, 000 fingers by tinkering with the variable region, designing it so that it will seek out, recognize and bind to a specific segment of DNA for a specific gene.

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HERC2 has no effect on eye color, but it contains an unexpressed segment of DNA that is needed for the switching on of a nearby gene called OCA2, as demonstrated by newly published work by Robert-Jan Palstra and others at Erasmus University in the Netherlands.

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