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10,8 would be the usual

10, 8. If the suffix '...genetica' had been used then the 8 could have come first. The extra words should reconcile in sequence of down clues : 22, 45, 31, 25, 35, 50, 21, 46, 47, 19, 27, 49, 39, 48, 24, 43, 20, 23. I don't agree that the puzzle was complex, as indicated earlier. There were various genetic or endocrine factors which might have been worked in there, however the opportunity was allowed to pass by. But better than last week...

I liked this one. Found the top half quite tricky despite getting the condition and treatments early. I have the same sequence as Mersault though I cannot see which word in 39 corresponds to the answer I have for 13 down. I assume that either "nuts" or "pants" is the redundant anagram indicator.
The answer I have is a jumbled word for death with an R substituted for an N.

advising is the extra in 39a... your 13d is good

Thought this was very good. Nice level of clue difficulty and enough going on with letters / substitutions etc that you had to keep your wits about you.

Don't understand the 'pants' in 39. Wasn't sure whether that or 'advising' was redundant til I had solved the down clues (unless it's just signifying you jumble the 'his' before dropping it, but if so does it really need to be there?)

smellyharry - Agree it's a stretch - but think you are right - 'pants' is just to indicate 'his' does not appear in consecutive order. Although think colloquially 'pants' means rubbish or not good.

Not the same thing - but being 'long in the tooth' I remember when I spotted regular anagram indicators - now I see a new one every week - I guess the list is endless!

39a is a composite or compound anagram which in the form presented here would normally require two anagram indicators. However, as the letters in 'his' appear within 'enthusiast' in the correct order, 'pants' is strictly speaking not required in the wordplay. Perhaps Serpent might argue that there is more than one way to remove 'his' from 'enthusiast' ?

Azed neatly summarised when a second anagram indicator is required in 1980:

"No one, I think, would question a clue constructed on the lines of x + y + anagram indicator = z, where x and y consist of one or more words or letters (such as abbreviations, etc.) each, possibly separated by intervening verbiage which indicates that they are to be dealt with together. It is a relatively small step from that construction to one which goes: x is that which + y + anagram indicator would/could give z, or alternatively x is that which z – y + anagram indicator(s) give, where x is the answer to the clue. The first of these two variants (which involves addition rather than subtraction) is both neater and easier to manipulate since I would maintain that in the second the clue-writer should include anagram indicators for both z and y before the subtraction process occurs except in the rare cases when the letters in y may be subtracted from z in their natural order."