Scientists studying the human genome have found that each of us is carrying around 20 genes that have been completely inactivated, suggesting that not all switched-off genes are harmful to health. A team at Britain’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is developing a new catalogue of so-called “loss-of-function” (LoF) gene variants to help identify new disease-causing mutations, and say their work will help scientists better understand the normal function of human genes.
