Medical scientist Howard Young’s research has taken a dramatic, unexpected turn in the last few months, thanks to a serendipitous chain of events that could lead to a genetic test that can predict heart failure in certain people before it happens. It started when members of his team, Delaine Ceholski and Cathy Trieber, discovered a new mutation in a protein called phospholamban, which they predicted would cause the heart to be less responsive to changes in the body and eventually lead to heart failure. One month after submitting their paper to the Journal of Biological Chemistry for review, their work was validated when - in completely separate research - the mutation was found in two patients in Brazil.
