How do mutations happen, and how do they influence the future of a species? Molecules of sickle-cell hemoglobin stick to one another, forming rigid rods. These rods cause a person's red blood ...

A gene known as HbS was the center of a medical and evolutionary detective story that began in the middle 1940s in Africa. Doctors noticed that patients who had sickle cell anemia, a serious ...

By birth, γ-globin production is normally switched off, but a significant fraction of RBCs still contain a mixture of fetal and adult hemoglobin. Because the sickle-cell mutation is present only ...