You won’t believe these three unexpected discoveries – and neither did the scientists who made them
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Researchers at one of the UK’s leading genetics centres tell us about their serendipitous findings.
By Gaia Vince
Science, mostly, progresses iteratively. But every now and then, a discovery will be made – often incidental to the main aim of the research – that is entirely unexpected. Such serendipitous findings enable us to leapfrog our usual incremental advances. They can even disrupt a whole field of research.
In 2003, the Human Genome Project, the 13-year-long international effort to fully sequence human DNA and identify all our genes, was completed. The Wellcome Sanger Institute, near Cambridge, England, was the only British organisation involved, completing the sequence of one-third of the genome.
While many of the great proclamations made at the launch of the project have yet to be realised, there is no doubt that sequencing the human genome was a technological gamechanger for science in the way that, say, the invention of the printing press and microscopes were in previous c...
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