Eventually, predicts Professor Sikora, people could even be implanted with a "gene chip" which could detect the earliest signs of the geneticmutations that cause cancer.
The technique found geneticmutations known to cause intellectual disability in 16 patients, and genes of unknown function that appear to be the cause in another 22 patients.
In subsequent studies, she unravelled how geneticmutations in this protein cause a rare inherited condition, known as neonatal diabetes, in which patients develop diabetes soon after birth.
First, when a new copy of copia inserts itself into a fly's genetic material, it may cause a deleterious mutation to a previously healthy gene (hence all the copia-related mutations detected by geneticists).