Biology and Magical Consumables

This past week I have been reading up on molecular and cell biology. As a chemist, who is interested in the origin of life, it behooves me to educate myself in areas outside my field of expertise. This is part of why I make the effort to learn more biology, physics, geoscience and complex systems. Another part of the reason could be that as a proponent of a liberal arts education leading to life-long learning, I should practice what I preach and keep learning. However, the part that keeps me going is that I simply find it fun to learn new things. The very fascinating cell represents the basic building block or unit of life. Omnis cellula e cellula (“all cells come from other cells”) was Rudolf Virchow’s famous aphorism back in 1855.

The confluence of writing a blog, reading biology and reading Harry Potter, leads to interesting thoughts and associations. This has been an enjoyable and unexpected effect of starting the blog. I’ve now made connections (some tenuous) among different fields and have come up with all sorts of ideas (some crazy) that I can bat around.

So, what do the following three things have in common from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Ton-Tongue Toffee. Polyjuice Potion. Gillyweed.

In case you haven’t read the book (gasp!) let’s summarize what happens when these three items are “consumed”. When Harry’s cousin, the greedy Dudley, eats Ton-Tongue Toffee, his tongue grows at an alarming rate in both size and mass. Polyjuice Potion is used to change one’s appearance to that of another person. An important ingredient of the potion is a “body part” (e.g. hair or fingernail) of the person one is changing into. When Harry chews gillyweed it allows him to “grow” gills to breathe underwater, in addition to webbing between his toes and fingers allowing him to swim quickly and smoothly.

From the book it is clear that the potion and gillyweed are both temporary effects, i.e., after some time the effects wear off and the user returns to his or her original state. The effects of the toffee are magically reversed quickly by Arthur Weasley, father of the Weasley twins who are the co-inventors of the toffee. The twins also invented Canary Creams, which when eaten, turn one temporarily into a canary. After a while the canary moults to reveal the person who ate it restored to normal. By analogy, the toffee's effects might also be temporary.

Genetically-modified foods have sometimes been dubbed “frankenfoods” (after Frankenstein’s monster) and the wilder speculations describe monstrous deformities affecting the consumer. Given that scientists studying the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster have successfully genetically reprogrammed mutants to sprout (or I should say develop) extra eyes, wings, legs, antennae, in parts other than their “natural” state, it is easy to paint a picture of creating “monsters” through eating genetically-engineered foods. In the fruit fly mutants, these deformities are typically permanent if one has modified the genetic code that programs the development of its body parts. This is similar to when Peter Parker gets bitten by the spider and becomes Spider-Man. In the newer 2012 movie The Amazing Spider-Man, cross-species genetics features as a prominent theme. The main antagonist, Dr. Curt Connors, makes use of reptile/lizard genes in an effort to regrow his missing limb. The initial dose is temporary, i.e., the lizard transforms back into Connors after some time.

In genetically-modified foods, direct changes are made to the DNA of the organism. The result of this change is that the DNA can now code for proteins that enhance the organism in some way (usually to prevent disease or predation in crops). Another way to make changes is through viral infection. In this case, the virus hijacks the cellular and metabolic machinery of its host to replicate the viral DNA allowing the virus to proliferate. This change is not permanent in the sense that the host organism’s DNA is not modified. Perhaps this is how the Polyjuice Potion works. A viral solution amplifies the DNA of the person being changed into (obtained from the fingernail or hair) with great speed, but the effects are temporary.

The Ton-Tongue Toffee on the other hand resembles what some cancerous cells may do, i.e., they keep replicating themselves and grow out of control. Anything that disrupts the cell cycle machinery and messes up the timing of cell division and growth, can be cancer-causing. The toffee may have certain molecules that recognize and target tongue cells and then cause them to multiply unrestrained. In this case, the DNA of the host does not necessarily need modification. Instructions to the cell to replicate non-stop are sufficient. DNA is the blueprint in this case, but does not necessarily direct the show.

In a delightful and very readable book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body, the biologist/paleontologist Neil Shubin connects the human body plan to evolutionarily older body plans including ancient fish. (Apparently there’s a TV series too, which I haven’t watched so I cannot vouch for it personally.) While a marquee example is the connection between the fins of the ancient Tiktaalik and human arms, fish gills also come up as part of the story. Apparently human muscles, nerves and bones, used in speech correspond to gill structures in fish; and apparently you can find people with a “gill hole” above their ears. (I have not successfully seen this since it might be rude to get up close and stare at someone’s ear area.) Now there might be some fishy genes in our human DNA that can be easily turned on by Hox genes or the homeobox, important in directing organismal development. If so, maybe chewing on gillyweed releases the appropriate molecules that activate our fishy genes. Alternatively, this could be triggered the same way Curt Connors a.k.a. Lizard acquired temporary reptilian characteristics.

The purpose of this mental escapade is not to try and “explain” how things work in the Harry Potter universe. Clearly I am also outside my scientific area of expertise as my own research does not overlap much with extant biochemistry (yet). Rather, I think it is interesting that magical folks use magical “spells”, but they also make use of a continuum of objects, some of which may be “naturally” magical, and others might be imbued with magic (as in an object intentionally charmed by a wizard or witch). The boundary of what is natural and unnatural (perhaps monstrous) is no longer as clear in our world. The boundary between organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry is not so easy to define. Is there a similar blurring of the lines between magic and nonmagic? What is it about Care of Magical Creatures or Herbology that makes a living species a magical one, or one with magical properties?

The short, and perhaps unsatisfying, answer: More fodder for my blog.