Sam Berns was my friend. With the wisdom of a sage, he inspired me and many others about how to make the most of life. Afflicted with the rare disease called progeria, his body aged at a rapid rate, and he died of heart failure at just 17, a brave life cut much too short.
My lab discovered the genetic cause of Sam’s illness two decades ago: Just one DNA letter gone awry, a T that should have been a C in a critical gene called lamin A. The same misspelling is found in almost all of the 200 individuals around the world with
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