"Werewolf" gene found.

A team of scientists recently made a hair-raising discovery: They found a gene--a bit of cell-programming information--that makes some people extra hairy, like werewolves of Hollywood fame.

"This gene may cause abnormal amounts of hair to sprout across a human's face and upper body at birth," says Brian K. Hall, a developmental biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, who wrote about the research.

To uncover the "hairy" gene, doctors at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, took blood samples from 19 people whose faces and upper bodies are entirely covered with thick, dark hair. The samples spanned five generations of a single family. The gene team discovered that the family's DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)--the chemical that genes are made of--included a mutant, or altered, gene, Hall explains.

All humans have the hairy gene, says Hall. But in most people it is dormant, or inactive. "The hairy trait might occur when the gene is bombarded by radiation or a harmful chemical, which somehow turns the gene on," he says.

Super hairiness may be "an evolutionary trait left over from our animal ancestors," theorizes Hall. Those animals had fur to protect them from the cold. Finding that the gene still exists in a dormant state, Hall says, "tells us that our body stores a lot of genetic information for a long time."

Now that the scientists know where to find the gene, "we can use the information to help us understand more about the pattern of hair growth," says Hall. "Hopefully, we can come up with a treatment for the [hairy] disorder in the future."