For the first five months of Harrison Harkins’ life, doctors had little idea about what was causing his spinal malformation and inability to gain weight. But in November 2011, Matthew Bainbridge, a computational biologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, found a clue. After analysing genetic data from Harrison and his parents, Bainbridge discovered that the child had an abnormal version of a gene called ASXL3.But Bainbridge had no easy access to records of other children with ASXL3 mutations, and could not be sure that this mutation was the culprit. So he did what many scientists do: he networked. A Dutch team put Bainbridge in