dealing with and managing these
diseases to serve sort of as a
National Guard, so, when we do find
somebody who resilient to cystic
fibrosis, we would love to call upon
all those individuals with cystic fibrosis
to serve as controls in the decoding.”Deciphering the data
It’s this part, the decoding, where
things get really hard. As the previous
studies have shown, superheroes are
out there and are relatively easy to find.
But the big challenge is working outhow they’re doing it. Take the
example of the man who dodged the
Alzheimer’s bullet.
“It’s what I like to call a smoking
airbag, the opposite of the smoking
gun. This guy has had an airbag in
his biology that has gone off and we
need to find it, but it’s looking for
the needle in the haystack.
What other genetic or
environmental factors in this guy’s
life have enabled him to escape this
disease, where in every other case
NWO/IVAR PEL, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X2, GETTY that we’ve seen it’s been fatal,”82 February 2017| GENETICSSCIENCE“In the past, we had this kind of
black-and-white idea about genetics
but now there are all shades of grey”
Below: Dr Cisca Wijmenga is leading the Dutch
study into genetic superheroes.Bottom: In this digital representation of the human
genome, each colour represents one of the four
chemical components of DNA.76 February 2017