rs73598374
How deeply you sleep
What this position does
Adenosine is the molecule that builds up while you are awake and makes you feel sleepy, and it is what caffeine blocks. This variant slows the enzyme that breaks adenosine down, so sleep pressure builds higher, and carriers show measurably more deep slow-wave sleep.
Sleep. Shaped by how sleep pressure builds. This is one of the variants that differs sharply between human populations, because something in the environment made one version worth having.
Light, dark and sleep
The clock in your body is set by light. It evolved under one sunrise a day and no other bright light at all.
What changed: Industry, roughly the last two centuries. Indoor work, heated buildings, refined food, cheap salt and sugar, tobacco at scale, and a collapse in infectious disease. This is where most of the deals in your genome came undone.
Why it spread: nobody knows. The frequency difference between populations is real and measured. What the variant was worth having for is not known, and any site that tells you is guessing.
Spiral Staircase, chapter 23: Sleep and the Dark You Have Lost Spiral Staircase is written by the same author as this site.
What each result means
| If you carry | What it means |
|---|---|
| No copies of the effect version CC | You have the faster enzyme on both copies Typical adenosine clearance, and typical deep sleep. |
| One copy CT | You carry one slower copy Associated with more deep slow-wave sleep and greater sleepiness after sleep loss. Carriers are also often more sensitive to caffeine, since the two act on the same system. |
| Two copies TT | You have the slower enzyme on both copies Rare. The same direction, more strongly. |
How common each version is
| Ancestry group | T (the effect version) | |
|---|---|---|
| African | 0.2% | |
| American | 2.0% | |
| East Asian | 6.3% | |
| European | 6.2% | |
| South Asian | 11.7% |
1000 Genomes Project phase 3, via Ensembl, retrieved 2026-09-23. These groupings are coarse and flatten a great deal of internal diversity, particularly within Africa. A variant being common somewhere tells you where a piece of your ancestry probably comes from, and nothing else.
How many people carry each result
| Ancestry group | CC | CT | TT |
|---|---|---|---|
| African | 658 / 661 | 3 / 661 | 0 / 661 |
| European | 443 / 503 | 58 / 503 | 2 / 503 |
| East Asian | 442 / 504 | 60 / 504 | 2 / 504 |
| South Asian | 379 / 489 | 106 / 489 | 4 / 489 |
| American | 333 / 347 | 14 / 347 | 0 / 347 |
Counts of people, not modelled frequencies: every one of the 2,504 individuals sequenced by the 1000 Genomes Project phase 3, tallied by the genotype they carry. Deriving these from allele frequencies instead would assume random mating inside each group and undercount the homozygotes.
How to find out which you have
If you have taken a test with 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA, TellMeGen or Living DNA, this position is very likely already in the raw data file they gave you. You do not need another test.
One thing to watch if you look it up by hand: testing companies report some positions from one DNA strand and some from the other, and the file does not say which. Read the letters as they appear and you will get the opposite of the truth for some positions. Sequencings resolves that automatically.
Source
Coordinates and allele pair verified against Ensembl GRCh37. Direction of effect verified against VEP protein consequences or 1000 Genomes population frequency. Category: Population adaptation.
Where this fits
Common questions
What is rs73598374?
rs73598374 is a position in the ADA gene on chromosome 20. Adenosine is the molecule that builds up while you are awake and makes you feel sleepy, and it is what caffeine blocks. This variant slows the enzyme that breaks adenosine down, so sleep pressure builds higher, and carriers show measurably more deep slow-wave sleep.
What does it mean if I have TT at rs73598374?
You have the slower enzyme on both copies. Rare. The same direction, more strongly.
What does it mean if I have CC at rs73598374?
You have the faster enzyme on both copies. Typical adenosine clearance, and typical deep sleep.
How do I find out my rs73598374 genotype?
If you have taken a home DNA test, this position is very likely in the raw data file you were given. Sequencings reads that file in your browser without uploading it, and resolves which DNA strand each position was reported from, which is the step most manual lookups get wrong.
This is reference information, not medical advice, and not a diagnosis. See the medical disclaimer. Category: Population adaptation.