The virus responsible for the recent swine flu cases is highly unusual as far as scientists know, its genes being from widely different geographies and species.
A brute force approach to finding the genes underlying serious diseases is somewhat successful, but it is paradoxically limited by the existence of too many possible disease variants.
A mathematical model suggests that cultural exposure may explain why ineffective or even harmful treatments for medical conditions may persist or even spread.
Analysis of the gene sequence that is responsible for multiple sclerosis indicates that it may have originally been a retrovirus that inserted itself into the human genome millions of years ago.
