When Mr. and Mrs. George Fry landed on the shores of Massachusetts not long after the Pilgrims, they carried with them a secret that remained hidden for nearly four centuries. Their genes harbored a quirk that would travel through 16 generations of Americans, leaving a legacy of colon cancer. Now a Utah scientist, herself a descendant of Mayflower voyagers and Benjamin Franklin, has discovered the Fry family history.
Working with both cancer records and genealogy records, researchers found a genetic mutation responsible for a rare form of colon cancer. Modern-day genetic fingerprinting identified far-flung relatives with this defect, and the team then traced the family tree back to Weymouth, Massachusetts. There, they found the Frys, who had decamped from their home in Somerset, England, sometime between 1624 and 1640, harboring hopes and the seeds of disease.
The discovery, detailed last week at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, appears to be saving 21st-century lives. Physicians have tracked down distant relatives of the Frys and offered those who have the mutation testing for early signs of colon cancer and preventive treatment. The result: cases of the kind of colon cancer spawned by the mutation have nearly vanished in Utah.
You can read more at: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/04/04/a_cancer_mutations_colonial_roots/.
