They told me I also was homozygous for a change which - gene where you have Cowland’s Disease [?], which - in some way would be a very bad fate. In fact, I probably shouldn't be here if I had it in any way. And only earlier this week in Edinburgh did I learn that someone had looked at my genome sequence and concluded that my mutations in it were not the disease causing one but, you know, one removed from the disease causing one. So I didn't worry about it because I was 80, but again, if I'd been told that at 20 I might have, you know, thought, my life won't be very good. But of more value, and that came from Craig Venter who published his own gene sequence soon afterward, which he did by the old fashioned way. So we calculated that he must have spent at least 20 of his shareholders' money sequencing himself, if not more. But they published an article which compared his cytochrome p450 genes with Craig's and Craig was superior to me and that he had normal variants, but in one of them, cytochrome C2P6 or P2C6, yes, yes- but anyway, it's the cytochrome which metabolizes beta blockers and also converts codeine into heroin, that I have an Asian variant. I was homozygous for an Asian variant, which means I metabolize them about 10-fold less, slower. And that immediately explained why when beta blockers had been given to me to control my blood pressure, they controlled my blood pressure, but you know, within a week or so I was just totally asleep during the middle of the day. So when the doctor knew this, he gave me another beta blocker that did the same thing, but he didn't think in terms of the fact that, you know, I might be - have genes which led to the enzymes being sort of inactive. So that's greatly benefitted, now I take a beta blocker, you know, once every eight or nine days instead of once a day. And they control my blood pressure just as well. The initial announcement didn't tell me that I had only one good copy of the lactase gene, so I'm somewhat milk intolerant, which explained why in 1953 when I was at Clare College the year we worked out the DNA structure, my stomach was always giving me gas problems. And you know, I went to the local prominent GP who, you know, sort of thought it was psychosomatic. And in those days, no one associated constant gastric problems or intestinal problems with inability to do milk. When I then got that news, I looked up the literature on lactase, including one paper which concluded that very, very likely Charles Darwin's mysterious disease was that he was homozygous for it. He did have one good copy and so four or five hours after a meal, he would just feel desperately ill and probably drank lots of milk because Down House had a farm. But even though these articles appeared, the sort of Darwin world hasn't seized upon it. They always thought, did he pick up some parasite when he was in South America? Because I think the problems - he didn't have those problems until he returned from the voyage of the Beagle. So that's why they thought it was something he picked up. But often, you sort of slowly lose when you're - what you lose is your ability as an adult to lac, as a young child you have a different promoter doing it. So Darwin may have, you know, had smaller amounts by the enzyme and by the time he got really old, it stopped being made. So I now carry with me lactase pills which I take if I know I'm going to, you know, going to eat a lot of ice cream or something like that.
