Earwax & ABCC11 in 11: Body odor biology and marketing

East Asian populations often show high dry-earwax allele frequency — a cline, not a moral story. This is how to teach geographic genetics without a ladder of peoples. Absolutely not. It is one trait with a known variant. Because inheritance is relatively clean for teaching. The same locus affects apocrine secretions relevant to odor.

Culture and marketing dominate; genetics is background. Trait frequencies are weak, ethically fraught ancestry clues — not destiny. Mostly benign variation; see a doctor for ear disease. Taste-PTC; genetic-structure; race-is-not-biology. Older texts racialized earwax; we reverse that framing.

ABCC11 encodes a transporter affecting lipid secretion into earwax and sweat glands. A loss-of-function allele associates with dry, flaky cerumen. Dry-earwax alleles reach high frequency in parts of East Asia and vary elsewhere. Maps are sampling summaries — individuals are not their continental average.