[HN Gopher] Genomic analyses of hair from Ludwig van Beethoven (...
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       Genomic analyses of hair from Ludwig van Beethoven (2023)
        
       Author : petercooper
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2025-09-30 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cell.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cell.com)
        
       | peterlk wrote:
       | > We also discovered an extra-pair-paternity event in Beethoven's
       | paternal line
       | 
       | I'm not a Beethoven scholar. Is this a novel discovery?
        
         | bloak wrote:
         | No idea! But I found this part of the paper confusing: "between
         | the conception of Aert van Beethoven's son Hendrik in
         | Kampenhout, Belgium, in c.1572, and the conception of Ludwig
         | van Beethoven seven generations later in 1770, in Bonn,
         | Germany". I think that means that there were 8 generations from
         | Aert to the famous composer, so Aert was the
         | great...grandfather with 6 greats. (How many people know their
         | family history that far back?)
         | 
         | The Wikipedia article for the composer's grandfather (who was
         | also called Ludwig) says: in 1712 two boys named Ludwig van
         | Beethoven were born. The two families were distantly related.
         | [...] it is not certain "which Ludwig" actually settled in Bonn
         | in 1733
         | 
         | But presumably both of those boys were officially descended
         | from Aert so it doesn't matter for the purposes of this
         | analysis.
        
           | Archelaos wrote:
           | > How many people know their family history that far back?
           | 
           | That is not so uncommon in Europe. Both from my maternal and
           | paternal line the oldest ancestors I am aware of lived almost
           | 400 years ago, in the mid 17th century. Before that the
           | registers from my region are very patchy, because of the
           | devastations of the Thirty Years' War. Were this is not the
           | case, it is not uncommon that one is able to continue the
           | line back to the 16th century, especially for people living
           | in towns (not to speak of the aristocracy).
           | 
           | Or, as another example, here is photo of the reunion of the
           | "descendants and sides relatives of Dr. Martin Luther and
           | Katharina von Bora" (not related to myself):
           | https://www.lutheriden.de/the-lutheriden.html
        
         | advisedwang wrote:
         | The article says:
         | 
         | > One Beethoven biographer63 has previously suggested, on
         | circumstantial grounds, that Ludwig senior may not have been
         | Johann van Beethoven's biological father
         | 
         | > 63 Canisius, C. Beethoven "Sehnsucht und Unruhe in der
         | Musik": Aspekte zu Leben und Werk Originalausgabe. Schott, 1992
         | 
         | So it's been hypothesized but presumably not demonstrated
         | genetically.
        
       | suprnurd wrote:
       | It's kind of crazy that we can pull Beethoven's health history
       | and even family secrets? out of a few strands of hair...
        
         | interroboink wrote:
         | Time to re-watch Starman (:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_(film)
        
         | bloak wrote:
         | Particularly since cut hair doesn't even contain DNA. Or at
         | least that's what is claimed by random web sites if you ask a
         | search engine. Never mind a full genomic analysis, even for
         | forensic purposes it is claimed that you need hair with the
         | follicle attached. Is that still true, or is that claim now out
         | of date, I wonder.
        
           | ebolyen wrote:
           | It does seem like the state of the art differs from popular
           | understanding. Not only is mitochondrial DNA straight forward
           | (although not especially useful for forensics as it is
           | maternal), but with specialized extraction it is still
           | possible to recover nuclear DNA, just exceedingly painful to
           | do so.
           | 
           | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978032399.
           | ..
        
             | divbzero wrote:
             | _Gattaca_ did portray hair as being more than enough for
             | forensics. ("Keep your lashes on your lids where they
             | belong. How could you be so careless?")
        
           | divbzero wrote:
           | Well, they managed to analyze DNA from centuries-old hair in
           | this paper.
           | 
           | From the methods section:
           | 
           | > _Nuclear DNA in hair has an extremely low average fragment
           | length owing to the activity of endonucleases expressed
           | during hair formation._
           | 
           | But the researchers made adjustments for that during sample
           | prep before sequencing, and alignment after sequencing.
        
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       (page generated 2025-09-30 23:01 UTC)