Scientists Link Ozzy to Hard Partying Neanderthal...

Scientists Link Ozzy to Hard Partying Neanderthal...: "

Can we see in his genome any traces of his legendary rock-and-roll lifestyle—or evidence of his body’s efforts to repair any damage?

Conde: We cannot find the “Ozzy Osbourne” gene. But what we did see, as one of our scientists refers to it, is a lot of interesting smoke—but not any specific fire. We found many variants—novel variants—in genes associated with addiction and metabolism that are interesting but not quite definitive.

So can his genomes tell us anything about his ability to survive so many years of hard partying?

Pearson: I talked with Ozzy, and we looked at the genome with an eye toward the nerves. If you think about what makes Ozzy unusual, it’s that he’s a world-class musician, he has an addictive personality, he has a tremor, he’s dyslexic, he gets up very early in the morning. And many of these can be traced back to the nervous system.

One variant involves a gene that makes CLTCL1, which is a really interesting protein. When a cell takes in things from the outside membrane, it pulls itself in like a basket to pull things in. It does this in all kinds of cells, including nerve cells. He has two copies of an unusual variant that makes a grossly different version of the protein than most people produce. Here’s a gene that’s central to how nerve cells communicate with each other, so it’s curious to us to see a grossly different protein variant. It’s thought provoking.

We didn’t find anything that can explain to you from point A to point B why Ozzy can think up good songs or why he is so addicted to cocaine, but we found some things that would be interesting to follow up on.

Read and comment. From thedailyswarm.com."