ONE JULY AFTERNOON last summer, Matt Wilsey distributed small plastic tubes to 60 people gathered in a Palo Alto, California, hotel. Most of them had traveled thousands of miles to be here; now, each popped the top off a barcoded tube, spat in about half a teaspoon of saliva, and closed the tube. Some massaged their cheeks to produce enough spit to fill the tubes. Others couldn’t spit, so a technician rolled individual cotton swabs along the insides of their cheeks, harvesting their skin cells—and the valuable DNA inside.
Continue reading A FAMILY’S RACE TO CURE A DAUGHTER’S GENETIC DISEASE