Harry Potter and the recessive allele

Craig, Jeffrey M; Dow, Renee; Aitken, MaryAnne

doi:10.1038/436776a

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The influence of Harry Potter is not unique to the social sciences; the contagion of Pottermania has also spread to the medical profession. One early line of research attempted to establish the genetic basis of the wizarding phenotype (Craig, Dow, & Aitken, 2005;Dodd, Hotta, & Gardner, 2005;Ramagopalan, Knight, Ebers, & Knight, 2007). Another spirited debate was focused on the most appropriate differential diagnosis for Harry's headaches.…”

Section: Eye On Psi Chi Summer 2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

Throw Away What You've Heard About Learning Styles, With Megan Sumeracki, PhD

Sutter¹

2018

EyeOnPsiChi

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Section: Eye On Psi Chi Summer 2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

Throw Away What You've Heard About Learning Styles, With Megan Sumeracki, PhD

Sutter¹

2018

EyeOnPsiChi

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“…12 The two pairs of twins in the Harry Potter books, the Patil and Weasley twins, are monozygotic and both have magical abilities. Although two sets of twins is a small sample size, Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects Sreeram V Ramagopalan, 1 2 Marian Knight, 3 George C Ebers, 1 2 the finding does add credence to the idea of magic being a genetically determined trait.…”

Section: Twin Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects

Ramagopalan

Knight

Ebers

et al. 2007

BMJ

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Objective To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic. Design Literature review. Setting Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling. Participants Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs. Interventions Limited. Main outcome measures Family and twin studies, magical ability, and specific magical skills. Results Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable. Conclusions A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist, controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature. Magical enhancers regulating gene expression may be involved, combined with mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2 and MCR1. IntroductIonGenetic factors that underlie traits such as height 1 and weight 2 are currently under scrutiny using genome wide association methods, yet the detection of genes predisposing to magic has been given relatively short shrift. Using the books by J K Rowling about Harry Potter, a schoolboy wizard, to gain an insight into humans with magical abilities, one study suggested that magic is the result of a single gene. 3 This assertion has been contentious, however, with another study questioning whether magic is heritable. 4 We assessed the heritability of magic now that the Harry Potter series is complete with the publication of the seventh and final book. 5According to the Harry Potter books 5-11 most people in the world are muggles-that is, possess no magical ability-whereas a minority are witches and wizards with magical abilities. Rarely we are introduced to squibs, offspring resulting from the non-transmission of magic within a family with magical abilities. Compared with muggles squibs have some magical ability, as they can see and interact with the magical world.When considering the genetics of magic we need to be able to explain several observations. Firstly, matings between humans with magical abilities produce offspring with magical abilities, rarely squibs, and not muggles. Secondly, matings between humans with magical abilities and muggles seem to always produce offspring with magical abilities. Thirdly, matings between muggles produce either muggles or, rarely, offspring with magical abilities and never squibs. Finally, parent of origin effects are not apparent-examples exist of wizards with muggle father and wizard mother parentage and vice versa. Methods And resultsWe used the Harry Potter novels by J K Rowling [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] as original source material to identify characters from the magical and non-magical world-namely, muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs (see glossary)-their magical abilities, and familial relationships. To avoid factual errors, different members of the team carried out repeated readings of the novels and listened to unabridged audio productions of the books. M...

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“…Having obtained test kits for determining wizarding genes from Craig and colleagues, 9 we approached him with a view to testing him for a deletion in the wizarding gene. He was initially loathe to prove that he "might as well be a muggle," but upon hearing that he might spare his children the condition, he agreed "for Mrs. Norris' sake," (which, frankly, made us all a little worried, as Mrs. Norris is his cat).…”

Section: Case 3: the Squibmentioning

confidence: 99%