This has led to a lack of efficacy and to major safety problems when genes go to the wrong places.

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In a recent example, they have built a big data infrastructure capable of cross-referencing the relationships between 17, 000 genes and five major cancer subtypes across 20 million biomedical publication abstracts.

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Genes play a major role in this.

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The correlation is with the genes of what is known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).

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Sapra and Zak began by analyzing the genes of 60 professional traders working in five major Wall Street firms. (They collected the DNA samples in 2008 only three of the firms are still in business.) The scientists focused on a short list of genes that are known to affect the activity of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain.

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Usually with a complex disease there are so many genes with a small contribution, but this is a major gene.

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One of the major obstacles to genetic engineering has been the cost and labor involved in changing even a small number of genes in an organism.

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