The idea is that some of these disease-causing genes may have a purpose that scientists do not understand.

Because scientists are not certain how disease-causing genes are distributed, the geneticists at the conference were divided on the need to keep track of ethnicity.

The method, researchers say, could lead to new antibiotics and vaccines that are precisely aimed at disease-causing genes.

RNAi, for example, might not completely repress a disease-causing gene, making a drug ineffective.

This is typically used in order to detect the presence of a disease-causing gene.

In principle, it may be possible to correct disease-causing genes, even design a genome optimized for health and longevity.

Genetic testing has already been used in hundreds of cases to help parents who carry disease-causing genes to select healthy embryos.

He is also concerned about prenatal diagnosis in the fast-approaching time when the major disease-causing genes are easily detected.

Further reducing the hapmap's reach, the haplotype approach is likely to find only the disease-causing variant genes that are reasonably common in the population.