Episode description

Stat: Four. That’s how many letters in the DNA alphabet make up every living thing.

Story: How does genetic information transmit across generations? While trying to find out, scientists Craig Mello and Andrew Fire quite by accident made a discovery in 1998 that would earn them a Nobel Prize—and pave the way for the first drug to take on harmful genes. Pew’s Dan LeDuc talks with Mello about science’s surprises.

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