Scientists decoded DNA from Beethoven’s hair, saved by his fans. It offered clues on his final years.
most diseases are not purely genetic,“I love this paper. Zeroing in on one extraordinarily famous individual — it feels a little bit like time travel,” said Robert C. Green, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved in the research. “It isn’t so much the specific questions they answered as the fact that they ruled a few things out, searched for others, and made some truly original findings.
The team had a second essential element: consent from Beethoven himself, in the form of the written pleas to his brothers for his hearing loss to be studied. A study of the Hiller lock more than two decades ago suggested that the composer was afflicted by lead poisoning, which could have explained some of his illnesses.
hereditary causes of illness, they did not find any. They then used “polygenic risk scores,” which examine the risk for diseases that may have a genetic contribution but can also have environmental causes.
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