THE rogue gene that means many people on a remote island in the Pacific see
only shades of grey has been pinpointed. The discovery could eventually help
lead to a cure.
People with achromatopsia can’t distinguish colours at all. On the
Micronesian island of Pingelap, made famous in Oliver Sacks’s book The
Island of the Colourblind, 1 in 20 have the disease. Most can trace their
ancestry back to one of the 20 islanders left after a typhoon in 1775. That man
probably carried a single copy of a mutant gene that became common in the tiny,
isolated population.
The…
