Scientists have been interested in studying Ozzy Osbourne’s genome to determine what made him so resistant to heavy drug and alcohol use during all these years, and now the results are in. Very few people had their full genome sequenced and analyzed, and Genomics, a Saint Louis–based company, sequenced Osbourne’s genome, and Knome, Inc., analyzed the data.
In a way, people are gonna be disappointed because scientists were not able to find the highly desired Ozzy gene, the one that could explain his devilish ability to have endured massive amount of drugs, but it is as always much more complicated than this, as we still don’t understand much about genes and health or behavior.
However, according to the journal Scientific American, there were a few intriguing things about the Prince of darkness’ genes:
Although scientists are not sure about the connection, he has two copies of an unusual variant of a gene producing a protein central to how nerve cells communicate with each other.
He has also an unusual gene variation that regulates another gene involved into the breaking down of alcohol. Scientists don’t know yet, but may be they are onto something there!
OK, so Ozzy is an interesting evil mutant, but they have also discovered something else, quite unexpected: Ozzy’s chromosome number 10 has very likely traces of some Neandertal genes. For the longest time we believed these ancient brutes did not have any descendents, but they have now admitted that some have mixed with Asians and Europeans.
The Black Sabbath ex-frontman was reported tickled to hear this, saying this would ‘not come as much of a surprise’ to his wife or various police departments.
He was also able to discover he was a distant relative of Jesse James, Russian tsar Nicholas II, King George I, and Romans who were killed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. Quite a pedigree for the Osbournes!
And what about the musical gene? Another interesting point for which scientists still don’t have a clue, as they need to analyze many more musicians’ genomes. I can’t wait to see what they will find for Keith Richards or Iggy Pop.