The odd special mutation can be very helpful—the trick is knowing how to find them

Geneticist Jolanda van Leeuwen remembers the day she made a striking observation that would take her down a new research path. A strain of yeast cells carrying a complete deletion of an essential gene in their genomes, which should be lethal, somehow thrived in the Petri dish as if perfectly healthy. Van Leeuwen later determined that the cells had developed another mutation that allowed them to bypass the harmful effects associated with the missing gene.

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