The answer to a deadly disease in Africa could be a babbling, bumbling band of baboons--or at least their genes, anyway.

One-third of the African continent is almost completely free of cattle. About the size of the continental U.S., the region cannot support livestock because of the tsetse flies--tiny bugs no bigger than a half an inch--which live there.

Molecular geneticist Steve Kemp may have a solution that could help increase agricultural success on African farms, and it's all thanks to a baboon gene. This gene produces a protein that kills a protozoan called Trypanosoma brucei, which causes a deadly disease in both humans and cattle and is often carried by the tsetse fly.