STICK your finger in your ear. Is your earwax brown and sticky or pale and dry? The answer will depend on which version of a certain gene you have.
Individuals with dry earwax – a recessive trait common among people in east Asia – don’t actually make wax at all. Their “earwax” consists of dead skin and dirt, but lacks the oily secretions from glands in the ear that characterise “wet” earwax, which predominates in people of African and European origin.
Now a team led by Koh-ichiro Yoshiura at Nagasaki University in Japan has found the gene responsible for this difference by…
