Beethoven turned over

This being notice of some research into Ludwig van Beethoven’s genome, centred on some locks of hair, but supplemented with some family history and some public genome databases.

A collaborative effort involving 33 authors, 28 institutions, 7 countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, UK and USA), 3 continents, 173 references and copious supplementary material. One wonders how an effort of this sort is managed. Did the team go in for occasional away-days in some attractive Sicilian resort town, perhaps Taormina?

Five of the eight samples of hair which were examined, listed in the figure above, almost certainly came from the same individual and the state of the samples was consistent with an early 19th century date. Comparison with other samples suggested a north German origin. 

Various more or less exotic medical theories which had been derived from the Hiller lock, No.7, can now be discarded.

Comparison with living relatives suggested what is coyly called an extra-pair paternity (EPP) event at some point prior to Beethoven’s birth.

The team failed to find genetic evidence for Beethoven’s hearing loss or for his gastro-intestinal problems. On the other hand, they did find genetic evidence for liver problems, including the cirrhosis of the liver which probably killed him. It also seems that Beethoven was quite a heavy drinker, at least for some periods of his life.  And that he had Hepatitis B in the last months of his life, if not at other times. It is possible that it was chronic from birth.

And lest we worry about the invasion of privacy, it seems that he asked for the details of his health to be published after his death.

He appears not to have been a coeliac, which might have accounted for or exacerbated his bowel problems – something I notice because my father-in-law (sometimes FIL in these pages) was a coeliac, which caused him serious problems in his middle years and was something of a nuisance after that – although it did not stop him living into his nineties.

Technical notes

Contrary to what I had thought, a hair has a complex structure, involving several, cylindrically arranged, layers of cells. So one can recover both chromosomal material from the cells and what I think is called meta-genomic material from the hair as a whole.

A catch being that old hair DNA is apt to be rather fragmented, to come in very short sequences. Which can be pieced together, but does make things more difficult.

Conclusions

An entertaining piece of work, with the expense justified by its novelty and the celebrity of the subject. 

No doubt there is more of this sort of thing to come: a micro version of the macro stuff pioneered by David Reich and noticed at reference 4. 

I would have thought there was room for coverage somewhere between the loud tones of reference 1 and the learned tones of reference 2. Something for the general reader with an interest in science. Perhaps a lecture at the Royal Institution? But not something I am qualified to attempt myself – beyond the few notes offered above. 

References

Reference 1: Celebrity Death Finally Solved - With Locks of Hair - F. Perry Wilson, Medscape – 2023.

Reference 2: Genomic analyses of hair from Ludwig van Beethoven – Tristan James Alexander Begg, Axel Schmidt, Arthur Kocher, Maarten H.D. Larmuseau, Göran Runfeldt, Paul Andrew Maier, John D. Wilson, Rodrigo Barquera, Carlo Maj, András Szolek, Michael Sager, Stephen Clayton, Alexander Peltzer, Ruoyun Hui, Julia Ronge, Ella Reiter, Cäcilia Freund, Marta Burri, Franziska Aron, Anthi Tiliakou, Joanna Osborn, Doron M. Behar, Malte Boecker, Guido Brandt, Isabelle Cleynen, Christian Strassburg, Kay Prüfer, Denise Kühnert, William Rhea Meredith, Markus M. Nöthen, Robert David Attenborough, Toomas Kivisild, Johannes Krause – 2023.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven. 

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=reich.