Word: colonizers
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...discovery does more than satisfy scientific curiosity. It means that researchers will now be able to save lives by developing a diagnostic test for the gene. Perhaps 1 million Americans carry it; if tested, they would be advised to have frequent colon exams. If tumors are discovered early enough, they can often be removed before the cancer spreads and becomes fatal. "This seems likely to be the first DNA test that will find its way into general clinical practice," predicts Dr. Francis Collins, who heads the Human Genome Project that is mapping all 23 pairs of human chromosomes...
...helps to scan for errors, detect them and fix them." When the spell-checking gene is damaged in some way, mistakes start piling up in other genes. Eventually some of the genes that keep cells from dividing uncontrollably are affected and cancer arises. It most often strikes the colon, but can also occur in the uterus, ovaries and other organs...
...search for the colon-cancer gene seems likely to go down in history as one of the great races of modern genetics. It was not the odds-on favorite team, led by Vogelstein, that isolated the mutated gene first, but rather a less well-known pair of biochemists from New England -- Boston's Kolodner and Richard Fishel at the University of Vermont...
...When we read about the ((evidence of a colon-cancer gene)) in May, we realized that the genetic instability being describing was identical to one that we already knew about in yeast," Fishel says. So he and Kolodner and their colleagues decided to hunt for a human gene similar to the yeast version. In November they rushed their results to the research journal Cell, which decided to publish the paper on Dec. 3. "We heard from Dr. Vogelstein a couple of hours after our paper was accepted," Kolodner recalls. Vogelstein, realizing he was about to be outpaced, then pulled together...
While legions of scientists are hunting down mutant genes like the culprit that causes some colon cancers, other researchers are seeking ways to fix the damage done by these mistakes of nature. Still in its infancy, the field of "gene therapy" has spawned dozens of experiments aimed at treating ailments ranging from cystic fibrosis to brain tumors. The goal is to transplant new genes into humans to do the work of defective ones -- or to give patients extra genes useful in fighting diseases...