Secretor Status

Your result, the one DNA position behind it, and what the research says.

7/10 confidence.

About Secretor Status

Your ABO blood group is on your red cells, but about four fifths of people also release the same sugar antigens into their bodily fluids and onto the lining of the gut. Those people are secretors. The FUT2 enzyme puts the sugars there, and this variant switches the enzyme off. Non-secretors are perfectly healthy; what changes is the sugar landscape of the gut lining, and since gut bacteria feed on and attach to exactly those sugars, secretor status measurably shifts which species thrive there.

Good to know: About four in five people secrete blood group antigens into their fluids. Non-secretor is a common and entirely healthy state. Gut bacteria feed on and attach to these sugars, so the gut community shifts.

Fun fact: Forensic science once relied on this: a saliva or sweat trace could reveal a person's blood group, but only if they were a secretor.

Discovery: The secretor gene was mapped to FUT2 in the 1990s, long after secretor status itself was described in the 1930s.

The Variant

The single variant behind this trait

Gene: FUT2

Variant (rsID): rs601338

Location: Chr 19:48,703,417

dbSNP rs601338

The studies

Sequence and expression of a candidate for the human Secretor blood group alpha(1,2)fucosyltransferase gene (FUT2). Homozygosity for an enzyme-inactivating nonsense mutation commonly correlates with the non-secretor phenotype (Kelly RJ et al., The Journal of biological chemistry, 1995)

Gut Microbiome Composition and Metabolic Capacity Differ by FUT2 Secretor Status in Exclusively Breastfed Infants (Thorman AW et al., Nutrients, 2023)

Other lifestyle traits

Nicotine Receptor: A change in a nicotine receptor subunit, one of the strongest known influences on how much people who smoke tend to smoke.

Alcohol Flush: A change in the enzyme that clears acetaldehyde, the compound alcohol turns into first, which causes the facial flushing some people get from one drink.

Caffeine Clearance: Two positions in the regulatory DNA of CYP1A2, the liver enzyme that breaks down about 95 percent of your caffeine, setting how fast it leaves your system.

Back to All Traits

Content updated September 2026.

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