SAN DIEGO — Was Ozzy Osbourne a pioneer in the field of genome sequencing? Did the heavy metal icon, who died Tuesday at the age of 76, help make a breakthrough in DNA testing?

Well, kind of.

In October 2010, the legendary singer and his wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, were front and center at the Hotel del Coronado for TEDMED, an annual conference focusing on health and medicine.

The two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee was one of the first people to have the entire DNA library embedded in their cells mapped. This was done after a blood sample of his was sequenced in a machine made by Life Technologies of Carlsbad.

“I must confess that I don’t really understand this,” Osbourne told the TEDMED audience of 600. “I find it interesting, but I don’t really understand what it means.”

The results of his test indicated that he didn’t metabolize caffeine very well and that he had a gene tied to smelling limitations.

Surprisingly, the results also indicated that he was a distant relative of comedian Stephen Colbert, as well as prehistoric Neanderthals and some of the people who died nearly 1,000 years ago during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii, Italy. Not surprisingly, the results also showed that Osbourne — whose often rampant, near-fatal drug use and drinking were well-documented — had a higher than average chance of being an alcoholic.

The legendary singer, songwriter and band leader wondered aloud why anyone would want to do research on him, especially given his decades of self-destructive behavior.

Ultimately, his wife convinced him to undergo the test.

“I’ve always said that at the end of the world, there would be roaches, Ozzy and Keith Richards,” Sharon Osbourne told the attendees, who paid $4,000 each to attend. “It’s fascinating to me how his body can endure so much, and he’s still going. I was just really fascinated by his body chemistry.”

Ozzy Osbourne’s genome sequencing indicated he did not have the markers related to Alzheimer’s risk. It is unclear if the test detected any signs of the Parkinson’s disease that he was diagnosed with 10 years later in 2020.

But his test did indicate he had a variation of the AVPR1A gene, which was linked to musical abilities in 2009 by researchers who studied the genetic makeup of 19 families in Finland.

“We certainly want to sample a larger sample of musicians to explore that,” said Nathaniel Pearson, a geneticist with Knome.

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