{"id":582324,"date":"2010-05-27T19:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T23:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/discoblog\/?p=9733"},"modified":"2010-05-27T19:00:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T23:00:31","slug":"ncbi-rofl-origins-of-magic-review-of-genetic-and-epigenetic-effects-discoblog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/582324","title":{"rendered":"NCBI ROFL: Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects. | Discoblog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"potterbook\"It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL!\u00a0After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from\u00a0holiday issues of the British Medical Journal<\/a>. Enjoy!<\/em><\/p>\n

“Objective: To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic. 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. <\/span>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.”<\/p>\n

Bonus from the full text<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Glossary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Assortative mating<\/em>\u2014people tending to mate with <\/sup>others like themselves\n<\/dd>\n
Chromatin<\/em>\u2014complex of DNA and protein <\/sup>that constitute chromosomes\n<\/dd>\n
Epigenetics<\/em>\u2014heritable changes <\/sup>in gene function not involving changes in DNA sequence\n<\/dd>\n
Epistasis<\/em>\u2014action <\/sup>of one gene modified by another\n<\/dd>\n
Founder effect<\/em>\u2014increase <\/sup>in gene frequency when a population has only a small number <\/sup>of original settlers (founders), one or more of whom had that <\/sup>gene\n<\/dd>\n
HapMap project<\/em>\u2014haplotype (series of correlated alleles) <\/sup>map of the human genome, currently being analysed in populations <\/sup>of African, Asian, and European ancestry\n<\/dd>\n
House elves<\/em>\u2014human-like <\/sup>creatures with distinctive magical abilities who are bound to, <\/sup>and act as servants for, several magical families\n<\/dd>\n
Histones<\/em>\u2014main <\/sup>protein components of chromatin\n<\/dd>\n
Metamorphmagus<\/em>\u2014someone <\/sup>with the ability to change their physical appearance\n<\/dd>\n
Muggle<\/em>\u2014someone <\/sup>with no magical abilities\n<\/dd>\n
Squib<\/em>\u2014someone with virtually <\/sup>no magical abilities who comes from a magical family\n<\/dd>\n
Parseltongue<\/em>\u2014ability <\/sup>to talk to snakes\n<\/dd>\n
Pureblood<\/em>\u2014someone whose ancestors all <\/sup>possess magical abilities\n<\/dd>\n
Seer<\/em>\u2014someone who can predict <\/sup>the future<\/dd>\n

\"magic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo: flickr\/Jodi Hebert<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Related content:
\nDiscoblog: NCBI ROFL: Quadruple feature: Harry Potter and the curse of headache.<\/a>
\nDiscoblog: NCBI ROFL: Accio medical degree!<\/a>
\nDiscoblog: NCBI ROFL: The history of poisoning in the future: lessons from Star Trek.<\/a><\/p>\n

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL!\u00a0After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from\u00a0holiday issues of the British Medical Journal. Enjoy! “Objective: To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic. Setting: Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling. Participants: Muggles, witches, wizards, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}