A study of almost 600,000 people has found that some people have natural born ‘superhero DNA’ that enables their bodies to cancel out genetic disease. Out of the 600,000 people who took part in the study, 13 of them were found resistant to debilitating diseases. BBC News reports: Experts said the approach, published in Nature Biotechnology, was “fascinating” but that it was still early days. Errors in our code of life – our DNA – can cause disease. Large numbers of studies have tried to understand these mutations by looking at people who become ill. But the international team of researchers tried the opposite approach – searching for people harbouring damaging mutations but who remain healthy. “Millions of years of evolution have produced far more protective mechanisms than we currently understand,” said Dr Eric Schadt from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He added: “Most genomic studies focus on finding the cause of a disease, but we see tremendous opportunity in figuring out what keeps people healthy.” The researchers scoured DNA databases containing information on 589,306 people. They found 13 healthy people who should have developed one of eight genetic diseases: cystic fibrosis, Smith-Lemli-Opitz [...]