Oh no, please don't do that.

Okay, fine.

EDIT: let this be my answer to rocket runner as well. It works too. But I only read his post afterwards.

There is more to genetics than Mendel's laws. First, a dominant gene may not be expressed fully -- this is called "penetrance". As an example, Huntington's disease is autosomic (i.e., not linked to the sexual chromosomes) and dominant with a penetrance of nearly 100% at 75 years old, but only 50% at 50 years old.

Secondly, there are sequences of DNA, most often situated before the genes themselves, that regulate their expression. They either enhance or repress it. Genomic imprinting (what I wrongly called "parental imprint" as an awkward literal translation from French) is a most curious way of regulating gene expression: according to whether the gene has been given by your mother or your father, it will be repressed or enhanced. This has nothing to do with sexual chromosomes, the genes are autosomic ones.

So even if it's a dominant transfer, the gene, if it's given by the "wrong" parent, won't be expressed.

Thirdly, we have the example of the X chromosome. Do you know why most females with a mutated X chromosome are only carriers of the disease, and not sick themselves? It's because they have two X's -- one healthy and one bearing the mutation. The two X's don't work simultaneously: one of the two is automatically inactivated.

Most females are healthy because their abnormal X is neutralised. Why does every cell systematically neutralise the 'bad' X? They could just as easily inactivate the healthy one. However, there is a preference for the normal 'X'.


So my hypothesis is: why wouldn't there be a preference for the 'magical gene' over the 'Muggle gene'? And if the Muggle one is inactivated, then magic would not be diluted. The same magical gene would be expressed as it's transferred, again and again.


Once upon a time, I had used these laws of genetics to give a (mostly) coherent explanation for the proportions of wizards, Muggles and Squibs. I forgot most of my reasoning -- my lessons of genetics were fresher in my mind than they are now -- but considering how many variables there are, JKR's views aren't so absurd. Of course, she probably invented her world while joyously ignoring the laws of genetics.

A possible explanation to this is 1. in DH 2. in my two previous posts.

In DH, Muggleborns are said to have stolen their magical powers. In pure-blood minds, magic must be inherited; so, pure-blood wizard? Awesome. Half-blood wizard? Alright (understand: they took everything from their magical parent and the other just gave 'normal' genes -- like those for the eyes, skin, hair, etc.). Everything in between? Fine.

But Muggleborn? Who the hell are they, these Muggles who suddenly find themselves with magical powers? Where did they find them?

It is conceivable that pure-blood wizards can't stand the idea of two Muggle parents creating a wizard. Muggles creating magic, in fact. They've either stolen it or are abominations of nature. And they will still be wizards who came out of nowhere even if they murder both their parents and their entire families.

Unlike half-bloods, who already have a spot in magical history.

 

I picture it as a manifestation of his self-loathing, for lack of the correct term. Additionally, he hates his lot in life from early on, and when he's shown to be a wizard, recognizes that gift as a way to get revenge on Muggles, even though he actually hates his mother as well, since she didn't care enough about her baby to want to live, and Tom Riddle could channel that into hatred for his Muggle father, since it was his father's rejection of his mother that broke her will to live. [Now that, folks, was a run-on sentence.]

Careful; you never know who might think you're serious about the Large Hadron Collider obliterating the Earth with the creation of a black hole in... wherever the fuck the Collider is built.

Ya know, we always hear that aspiring Death Eaters have to do something horrific - presumably to one or more Muggles or Mudbloods - and I wonder if there might be a story where Snape killed his Muggle father to "cleanse" himself from being a half-blood. Sort of like a magical honor killing...

 

You guys complicate this shit too much, Voldemort as presented through all seven books, is seriously moronic. I don't think he's given it any consideration beyond 'fucking muggles'.

 

I agree. It's like muscle memory: the more you do something, the easier it gets.

I wasn't ever denying that magic was a gene; I was explaining that magic being passed through blood made more sense to me. However, I wasn't aware of JKR's comment regarding magic. Thanks for telling me.

I admit, I was just going off of my knowledge of Mendel's laws when arguing my disbelief of magic being a gene. I'm afraid I'm woefully ignorant when it comes to genetics outside of that. My apologies.

If you ever found/remembered your explanation, I'd love to read it. It's quite interesting.

I'm sure JKR's reasoning behind everything she can't explain goes something like, "Why couldn't this work? It's magic!" And of course, she can get away with that.

 

Taure, maybe I misremembered. I tend to think people say things they never did, and I was under the impression that you had said something of the sort, related I think to magical schools being secret I think. If that's the case, I apologize. I know sometimes I come off as hostile, but that's not really my intention. There's no one on this forum I truly dislike, though some people do piss me off sometimes (you're not one of them). But I digress.

I stand by what I said. I'm pretty sure that with some effort I could find out how to make Sarin gas. Hell, I even posted one article in this forum once detailing how to build a DIY cruise missile. It's true that some knowledge is kept secret: how stealth planes work (even though this has gotten out a bit in recent years), Coca Cola's formula, Windows' code, etc.

However: pretty much all pure scientific knowledge is out there. That is because the people producing this knowledge gain reputation by how much of it they publish. Hence even a lot of practical, applied research, as in engineering, etc is made available, because a lot of it is still done in universities.

Wizard schools, on the other hand seem to have none of this, and their reputation seems to be measured by how much arcane knowledge they've managed to hoard, though how this is measured is beyond me, since to do it you'd need access to that knowledge in the first place.

Most of the knowledge that is kept hidden is something along the lines of trade secrets. But none of the stuff people mention as beyond beyond research here is anything of the sort: except, I guess, wand lore.

I can dig that horcuxes are a restricted subject, though I question the wisdom of restricting it when it means the people who are supposed to fight users of dark magic are made ignorant about them. But clearly some books on the subject were available in the Hogwarts library before Dumbledore removed them, so there is no reason, or rather, there shouldn't be any reason there isn't a library in Calcutta that isn't so scrupulous. We have library catalogs in the muggle world, and books can be ordered, and often are between universities: the postdoc I'm working for as an undergraduate research assistant mentioned it to me. In the magic world it seems this would be even easier to do, having an house-elf catalogue all the books, and sending them by owl. But from what we're shown of how wizard academia operates, there is only one copy of those books and they are in Hogwarts, and huge amounts of intellectual power are being wasted because they all have to make the same discoveries independently.

I'm babbling, as I often tend to do. My point is, none of this fits with an environment conducive to progress. It's like if I want to do work consumer theory in micro, I have to rediscover Carl Manger's marginalist theory, and Pareto's developments on it, not to mention calculus itself.

You are right in that there seem to be magazines covering certain topics of magical study,. But given this, I have to wonder if they're more like Forbes than the Journal of Financial Economics.

EDIT: Oh, and RE: Arthur Weasley, before I comment on what you said, let me just ask if you think his attitudes are representatives of wizards in general? I would say that they are, given how there doesn't even seem to be anything resembling an Encyclopedia you can look Nicholas Flamel on, but I'd like to hear your view on this.

 

I wouldn't given that wizards have been demonstrated to have enough understanding of the Muggle world to control its leaders like a kind of Illuminati (HBP chapter 1), and Ministry reports are written by and for Aurors about Muggle firearms, indicating that the Ministry keeps track of the Muggle world.

However, I would also say that Arthur Weasley isn't alone in his ignorance: the Daily Prophet article in PoA implies that some wizards at least need telling what a gun is.

 

That's not what I meant, though I understand why you'd think that.
What I'm asking is whether you think that Mr. Weasley's attitude toward the availability of knowledge is representative, not his attitude toward muggles.

Even though if he's one of the ministry's leading experts on muggles, they have a serious competence problem. But we knew that already.

 

I'd say he is representative of wizard's approach to Muggle knowledge.

When it comes to magical knowledge, when wizards want to know something they do have the same "find it out/look it up" reflex we do. Just think of the number of times the trio ended up in the library as a result of their adventures.

But yeah, they don't seem to cross the wizard/Muggle divide if it can be avoided.

 

But look at how the trio went about looking for things.

What would be the first thing you'd do in the pre-internet age if you wanted to find out who someone is? Either an encyclopedia or Who's Who?. But to find out who Nicholas Flammel was they had to dig out through books seemingly at random, and then even that didn't work!

There's my beef. It seems there is no thought given to systematization, because somehow it is expected that important knowledge consists of secrets. I realize the delay was necessary for plot reasons, but I'm talking of an in-universe explanation, which there is none.

 

Er, they did look in (the wizarding equivalents of) Who's Who. The only mistake they made was looking in the contemporary ones.

 

Right. At first, only knowing a person's name, they had no way of knowing if he was some very important historical figure or just someone who's mildly important today. Hence why I mentioned Who's Who? and an Encyclopedia. Nothing explains why they didn't try the latter.

I'd be willing to give this a pass if every other research instance we've seen didn't involve exactly the same procedure of reading random books of the shelves. The research to find a spell for the second task in GoF is the only example I need. A spell to breathe underwater seems both extremely useful and hard to use for any special nefarious purposes (any more than any other that is), so I don't see why they couldn't find anything except by outside help.

If simple spells like this are so difficult to find, how hidden must be any technical knowledge?

 

You're right, I should've quoted that part. The only reason I didn't was because I interspersed some of my own phrases throught and I thought it'd be weird that way. But yea, guilty as charged, but I really did quote him word for word more than once, so it's not like I don't think he deserves credit. He does, for being the most awesome HP reviewer in history.

 

I would say that while he was very interested in his own power and control, and I would say that is what Voldemort is moreso, he also did resent the muggleborns and probably used them for his own psychotic purposes. He himself was a muggleborn technically yes? So perhaps since he hated the situation he had been in as a child, he turned to hating those who shared something with him and instead fought hard to become what he wanted to be, which was the heir of Slytherin, a pureblood.

Maybe it could all translate out to daddy issues as well.

 

See thats what I've always been curious about though. What is the difference between Voldemort from the first war, when he was "human" and when he returned in GoF.

 

Voldemort to Frank Bryce, Chapter 1, GoF -- he says something like, "But I am not a man, Muggle. I am so much more than a man."

 

LOL @ sexual chromosomes.

/nerd rage

As for the rest, this isn't a lesson in Biology. Half of what you mentioned does nothing to justify your hypothesis.

Genetic imprinting -- the chances of that happening in mammals are less than 1%. And you're also assuming it's target-specific. A 'magic' gene, even if it existed, would not be imprinted every time - simple mathematical probability would see to that. A rare phenomenom such as this cannot be used to justify the existence of the entire magical population.

Sex-linked phenotypical expression -- why even mention it? Magic is NOT a sex-linked trait. If it was, then you'd have more wizards than witches (which is clearly not the case in canon).

Clearly, you haven't given this much thought. Or maybe, it's just a case of miscommunication. Either way, we are not in the same boat. All you did was slap together a few genetic phenomena and derive a hypthesis out of nowhere.

Kinda like something I would do in a maths exam when I'm having trouble proving LHS = RHS. Put random BS in the middle -- add a generic conclusion stating "therefore LHS = RHS", and hope for the best.

TL;DR

THIS.

A trait can be dominant, recessive, co-dominant or sex-linked. Since you can be either magical or non-magical, but not both, we can safely rule out co-dominance or incomplete dominance. Sex-linked is out as well (read above). Hence, we can conclude that magic is either dominant OR recessive. From rocker runner's post, the existence of a 'magic' gene poses a contradiction - ergo, scientifically impossible.

If classical biology says it ain't, then it ain't.