Lyn Griffiths, director of the genomics research center at Griffith University in Queensland, discovered the pocket serendipitously a couple of years ago--she met a Norfolk islander in an Australian pub. Now Griffiths, who collects large pedigrees to hunt for genes implicated in complex diseases, is mining the islanders for genes involved in heart disease.

The original nine mutineers set up housekeeping with their Tahitian consorts on tiny Pitcairn Island in 1790. In 1856, the community, then numbering 194, moved to uninhabited Norfolk Island. There are now about 1500 permanent residents, and because resources are limited, the only way to move there is to be related to someone who's already there, says Griffiths. The most common surname on the island is that of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers.

Griffiths and colleagues are collecting blood samples from 900 adult islanders, two-thirds of whom are direct descendants of the original group. Mixing the Polynesian vulnerability to obesity and heart disease with an Old English diet--they still "put cream on lots of things, including vegetables," says Griffiths--suggests a population rife with heart disease risk factors. Griffiths hasn't analyzed her data yet, but she says there seems to be a good deal of hypertension, and she expects cholesterol levels to be pretty high.

For the next 6 months the researchers will do health screening and analyze data. As basically one big family, the sample has great statistical power, she notes, and thanks to active Bounty genealogy trackers, "we know exactly how the family tree fits together."