Scientists at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, working with colleagues from the United States, have selectively modified the control regions of 20 disease-relevant genes. This enabled them to identify precisely those modifications that have the greatest influence on disease state. Their findings will now allow physicians to predict which DNA modifications found in patients are actually responsible for disease, thus highlighting them for a potential targeted therapy. The researchers have just published their results in the journal Nature Communications. Many diseases occur because a person’s DNA contains errors, so-called mutations. These cause vital protein molecules to be produced incorrectly. Sometimes the molecules are altered to such an extent that they are no longer able to perform their function.