Novartis is in final trials of a drug that may help the one-third of acute myeloid leukemia cases with a gene mutation that turns on cell-growth signals.

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It was then restored with a stem-cell transplant from a patient with the mutation.

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In the 1950s Anthony Allison, a British biochemist, observed that Africans who carry a single copy of the genetic mutation that causes sickle-cell anaemia are protected against malaria.

ECONOMIST: Genetics and infectious disease: The germ of an idea | The

With the help of Chiara Cirelli, who also works at the University of Wisconsin, Dr Tononi has created a mutant fruit fly that sleeps only two or three hours a night. (A normal fly sleeps between eight and 14 hours.) The mutation itself is in a gene for a nerve-cell protein of a type known as an ion channel.

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Children with the disease have a genetic mutation that causes them to produce the protein progerin, which blocks normal cell function.

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