"The demonstration that sickle cell hemoglobin differs in electrophoretic mobility
from normal hemoglobin led to the entitled inference: 'Sickle cell anemia, a molecular
disease.' This astonishingly simple concept is of fundamental importance to medicine
for the ultimate understanding of the origins of sickness, and to biology for the
insight into what genes do. In the author's words, 'This investigation...reveals a
clear case of a change produced in a protein molecule by an allelic change in a single
gene involved in synthesis.'" Samuel H. Boyer IV. Introduction to "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease." Papers on Human Genetics, 115-25. 1963.
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