How Iceland's Genealogy Obsession Leads to Scientific Breakthroughs

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/how-icelands-genealogy-obsession-le
ads-to-scientific-breakthroughs/ar-BB80WxS

There are only 320,000 people who live in Iceland, and most are descended
from a small clan of Celtic and Viking settlers. Thus, many Icelanders are
distant (or close) relatives. Sometimes too close...

...Because Icelanders do such a good job of tracing their family histories,Stefánsson and his colleagues at Decode, the genetics firm he founded, havea rich trove of data for experiments. So far, he’s discovered how specificgenetic mutations affect a person's chances of having everything fromAlzheimer’s to blond hair. He’s identified a certain cancer-causing mutationthat’s much more common in Iceland than in America, and he's uncovered agenetic component to longevity. Most recently, he and many co-authors foundthat a certain mutation introduced in Iceland in the 15th century is theprimary driver of Icelanders’ risk of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a diseasein which the heart muscles thicken.