| MadSci Network: Genetics |
There are many many different mutations that can be found in humans. The question actually gets complicated because you have to distinguish between different alleles of a gene, this is sort of like different flavors of a similar gene (having blue eyes or brown eyes mean that your eye color gene is different, but is the blue eye variant a mutation of the brown eye (or vice verse). So there are many different "normal" versions of genes floating around in different people. But we generally presume that changes that are bad for us are in fact mutations. Some of these cause physiological changes like what you describe, albinism. However there are many many (hundreds) of inherited diseases that are due to mutations found in humans. Examples are hemophilia, retinitis pigmentosa, sickle-cell anemia etc. Any good book describing human genetics can give a long listing of these. There is a web site called the Human Gene Mutation Database at http://www.uwcm.ac.uk/uwcm/mg/docs/new_back.html THis is designed for scientists and is not for general browsing, but it might give you an idea of the number and variety of mutations.
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Genetics.