I've been wondering about Voldemort's claim of descent from the Peverell's, on a genetic rather than a purely familial basis.

I've been synthesizing on genetics lately, ever since a witch friend told me of somthing called, IIRC, "The Seven Daughters of Eve", in which it is purported that the female line (dna) does not die out, although the male line does.

So it is possible to claim direct descent from anyone in your mother's direct line, but not your father's beyond a certain number of generations.

Interestingly, the American Indian peoples also carried this tradition down through time, and understood that their genealogical descent was through the mother.

Therefore, claims of descent over very long periods of time, via the paternal line, are invalid.

Has anyone calculated the actual generations from the Peverells, to the present generation? And does it fall within a realistic window of probability, to make a legitimate claim of descent?

This question has been intrigueing me ever since the lady revealed it to me; it has, of course, implications for those who believe in a "descendent of Jesus Christ". It appears from modern dna analysis, with regard to this theory, that such claims are questionable, especially considering all the overlooked factors of all the other Father's along the way.

Just curious, this got me thinking, as it's another of those delicious potential "easter eggs" in the "Potter Code"

Funny you should mention that book, johnpipe, as I was talking to my mother about that same book just yesterday. I read it about 8 years ago after my husband heard about it on an NPR radio program.

The way I was thinking about it, perhaps the Peverell connection was through the maternal line anyway. Voldemort came from the Gaunts, yet in many Western cultures it is the paternal name that is "preserved" along the male line. It would make sense because if Salazar Slytherin had any male decendents, the Slytherin name would have been handed down, so it suggests that a female is the direct line back to Slytherin grandfather.

As far as the male DNA being handed down, there was a contemporary example of determining the line of Sally Hemings belonging to the family of Thomas Jefferson. I don't think that is was specifically determined since Thomas Jefferson didn't have a "legitimate" male heir line himself, but it was determined that a male in Jefferson's (including a brother or nephew or TJ himself) family was indeed the progenitor of the Hemings descendents.

To explain why the female line doesn't "die out" is that all children (including males) from the same mother get the same mitochondrial dna, which the females then pass to their own children. A male doesn't pass on his mother's dna to his own children, but his children get their own mother's mDNA. If there is an unbroken male line (males in each generation) there is a tag of some sort carried on the "Y" chromosome, but if there is no male heir anywhere on that line for one generation, it can be lost as the "mix", and determination of paternal descent becomes foggy.

Modern Genetics would say not, as male information has to be passed down too! The Genetic information transfered to decendents is equal from both parents, so down the line, it is equal too. It may be easier to trace female traits as other diseases etc. are passed on through the mother's womb/milk, thus adding other traits, but it does not mean the male genetics are not there.

That isn't what I was saying.

The determination of male/female is exclusive to whether the father passes an X or Y chromosome to the potential child, as all children obtain an X from their mothers. An XX combination will make a female child, and an XY will make a male child.

There is something called mitochondrial DNA which is a residual DNA trace of a bacteria which contributed to our evolutionary process, and is contained in the organelles of our cells. All mothers pass these down to their children directly, and they aren't "mixed" with the father's during the fertilization process to make a unique strain to each individual. It is a biological imprint that can be used to trace us as members of the human race (over recent years, more than the 7 "clan mothers" mentioned in the original book edition have been identified).

Since males don't pass down mDNA, the only other known (this doesn't mean that more won't be discovered) trace along the male line is through the Y chromosome, which only boys would inherit from their fathers (both girls and boys inherit the mother's mDNA). If the line is broken by the absence of boys within a generation, the "tag" can become muddled, making identification of the male ascendency difficult. The only "solid" trace we have is over the female line, because all children, whether they are boys or girls will inherit their mother's mDNA. There is also less diversity with mDNA (emphasizing that we are all part of a great human family), and through studying it, new hypothesis have been made about the migration of different groups, from their newly discovered biological points of "origin" - based upon their shared mDNA.

This process seems to remarkably mirror the cultural practices of a paternal surname for family identification. Many women take on their husband's names after marriage, substituting their own family ties through their children for their husbands. If a boy is not within a generation, the "name" is in danger of "dying out" along that line, although there might still be girl children born to that particular father. That the family name of Peverell was an ancestor to Salazar Slytherin who was an ancestor to Marvolo Gaunt who was an ancestor to Tom M. Riddle, suggests that the tie that the future Voldemort had to Peverell was through the female ascendency, or else, he would have been born into a family named Peverell instead of to Merope Gaunt.

First, there is some minor transmission of paternal mitochondrial DNA, because occasionally some mitochondria in the sperm survive fertilization, though that is rare. Second, the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome is inherited in its entirety, father to son. However, since Voldemort is descended of Slytherin through his mother this is irrelevant. Whatever DNA Voldemort inherited specifically from Slytherin is autosomal DNA. Autosomal chromosomes are not inherited in their entirety from one parent but in pieces, due to a process known as crossing over. A person inherits one member of a pair of autosomal chromosomes from each parent, but this chromosome is composed of a mix of bits and pieces from the 2 homologous chromosomes of the grandparents, each of which was composed of bits and pieces of the chromosomes of the great-grandparents, etc. As a result it is impossible to determine how much Voldemort inherited from which ancestor way back then, but he obviously inherited something from quite a few of them. It is impossible to determine even how many ancestors Voldemort had back then. Theoretically the number of one's ancestors should double for every generation back, but that is impossible (you'd have over a million ancestors 20 generations back and over a billion of them 30 generations back). The solution to this seeming paradox is that ancestors overlap - even without marriages between cousins of ay known degree, so that one is descended from the same ancestor through more than one lineage. Of course with a known intermarrying family like the Gaunts overlap is greater and thus the number of ancestors even smaller than for an average person. Thus it is possible that Voldemort had quite a few stretches of DNA shared by descent from Slytherin, including the gene for the ability to speak and understand Parseltongue. If we consider the Gaunt's tendency to intermarry that proportion would be greater than expected. I don't think one can say anything more than that.

And that is why I brought up the example of the Hemmings' family. Thomas Jefferson, his brother(s) (through his father alone) and any nephews born of his brothers' relationships would share the same "tag" on the "Y" chromosome, through Thomas Jefferson's father (and back through the unbroken line of males in that family). Further DNA analysis was needed to determine if the Hemmings descendents were indeed through Thomas Jefferson, himself. The last I heard, they determined that the descendents were from the Jefferson line, although it wasn't conclusive to Thomas Jefferson, himself. This was an article I read from a few years ago, so I don't know if they were able to determine his paternity exclusively, due to the lack of a "legitimate" or "recognized" direct, male heir (son) of TJ.

Yes, but Voldemort would have the Riddle Y chromosome, not Slytherin's. However he may have quite a bit of Slytherin's autosomal DNA.

Exactly.

One of the things I remember being discussed a while back was Voldemort's assumption that his father was a wizard, and his disconcertion when he found out that his "magicalness' came from his mother.

Fathers pass things to their daughters too, that aren't on the "Y" chromosome (as far as I know, the "Y"'s sole purpose is the determination of gender, but I can be wrong). Neither the X nor the Y are superior from one another: both are needed to propogate the species.

Just as the "Seven Daughters of Eve" can identify the community group from where a person's maternal line originates, the mDNA alone won't identify the specific contemporary person who it came from. My children have mine, which is the is the same as my sisters', as my mother's, my niece's, as my aunt and her children, some of her grandchildren, (but possibly not all of them), and as it went back through the line of my grandmother, her mother ad infinitum. If I had a brother, however, he would share my mDNA, yet it is possible that his children wouldn't. It is simply a link through the past, which connects us all on a more "universal" level - we aren't really all that far removed from each other. The same is true for the "Y", yet that it can only pass through about 50% of the entire population, it is more exclusionary, which places the risk far greater for a direct line to be "broken".

When an egg is fertilized, the man's mDNA is one of the components that are lost, leaving only the mother's. So your brother's children wouldn't have your mDNA. They'd have their mother's, and her mother's, and so on. A lot of geneticists are starting to use the Y chromosome to trace ancestry--it's more accurate, apparently. Doing it that way allows you to trace the genetics to specific men, unlike with mDNA. But that wouldn't help Voldemort trace his Peverell heritage. He'd be able to trace his Riddle ancestors. And what about Harry's for that matter? They are both descended from the same family.

The only way for a male line to be broken is for a man to have no children. A woman's lives on in her sisters, aunts, mother, etc. But a man needs to pass on his DNA directly to his children, otherwise it is lost.

Hang on. If by "line" you mean "genetic material supplied by the named individual" then anyone's line is broken if they die childless. If, however, "line" means "genetic material from the specified person's ancestor" then surely a man's DNA might still exist in his brother. (Unless, of course, you are saying that sisters have identical DNA while brothers do not.)

- Acrux

The traces on the mDNA, as portrayed in The Seven Daughters of Eve, links almost everyone on the planet to 7 "clan mothers" (in the first edition of the book, I hear that since its publication, the clan mother numbers have increased by a few more). What I meant in the case of my non-existent brother's children, if he married a woman whose "clan mother" was the same as "ours" (one in seven isn't bad odds) we (his children and myself) could still share the same clan mother's mDNA. That is why it isn't conclusive in identifying a specific contemporary person or even a specific contemporary family, there are other DNA markers that are needed to determine that. I can't remember conclusively, but I believe that the "Y" tag on the male chromosome works in a similar way. In the Jefferson/Hemmings case, the "Y" tag, being the same in the Hemmings descended males, and the "recognized" Jefferson family males, made the further DNA investigation into the claims that TJ was the specific male who fathered Sally Hemming's children worth pursuing. From what I remember, there was more than a little reluctance on the part of the Jefferson family to disrupt the grave of TJ to obtain the samples needed to conduct the testing.

As for a specific person's DNA, I believe you are right, Acrux. Only in the case of identical siblings is the genetic code the same. I don't share either of my sisters' codes entirely, although the mDNA portion is the same. What I meant in terms of a male line being broken is that "Y" tag, if no boys are born of that line within a generation, since only boys would manifest that tag in their own DNA (the "Y" is what determines a male gendered child).

I have a question for the DNA pros here, my daughter looks just like my half of the family Maternal line. If you looked at baby pics of my Mom, sister and Grandmother you'd think they were sisters to my daughter. Yet I'm a guy, she looks just like me, or am I confusing the genetic material here?

In fact I seem to notice a pattern that at least the firstborn child tends to look like the man. There was a book "50 Hollywood fathers" and I noticed that many of the first born kids looked like their father.

Everyone inherits half their genetic material from each parent. It's just that most chromosomes (all but a large chunk of the Y chromosome, found only in males) are not passed on as single entities but are generated from bits and pieces of the homologous (equivalent) chromosomes that the parent inherited from hir own parents. That is I have 2 copies of chromosome 1, one from my mother and one from my father. But the chromosome 1 I got from my mother contains bits from the chromosome she got from her mother and bits from the one she got from her father. When the egg that ended up as my daughter was formed, its own chromosome 1 was generated by recombination of my own 2 chromosome 1s, such that she got a chromosome that has bits that came from my mother and bits that came from my father. Thus my daughter has genetic material from all her 4 grandparents, as do pretty much all grandchildren with their respective grandparents. How all this influences visible similarity is a lot more complex, less understood and when speaking of anecdotes involves a lot of observational bias.

Since the breakpoints aren't very repeatable from one generation to the next the length of DNA that has been travelling as a single unit over multiple generations can be very small - the exceptions being most of the Y chromosome (there is a small bit of Y known as the pseudo-autosomal region which recombines with the X chromosome) and the mitochondrial DNA.

I'm far from a pro, Shard, but I think it is the luck of the draw in the looks department.

In the case with my own children, my oldest (a girl) looked like my husband's side of the family when she was a baby- blond hair and all, to the point where people questioned how I could be her mother. As she has grown, her hair darkened (it isn't as dark as either mine or my husband's is now) but her face is like a Mini Me - the expressions are the same, how she carries her body is very similar to mine (though she is and will remain 8 inches smaller than me). My third child, another girl, at age 2 looked exactly like my husband did in a picture we have of him getting a haircut. My last child, my son, looks like my husband, yet his face is very similar to mine, and his legs and feet and overall build remind me a lot of my own father's - not my father-in-law's.

I heard something a while ago that it was speculated that infants and young children tend to resemble their fathers, so that the father would recognize them as his own. I don't know how true it is, but it would seem an evolutionary advantage, to have a willing father provide the resources necessary for his children's growth and development.

What I saw published was that mothers of small children tended to comment about the child's resemblence to the father (real or assumed? I can't remember) within his hearing.

There are also more dominant and more recessive traits. My nephew, for example, has dark brown eyes although his mother's eyes are hazel and his father's are light blue. The dark brown was probably expressed in my nephew because it was paired with a more recessive blue than the gene his mother's dark brown gene was paired with (she probably had a more dominant blue or green paired with a brown which made a hazel because her grandmother had dark brown eyes also, yet her own mother's eyes were blue and her father's were hazel). It seems strange but genes can be expressed after a long series of seeming absence from expression - they are just carried recessively. This seems to be the basis Rowling used for her 'magic' gene being expressed after generations having passed without a witch or wizard. All those muggles in the family could have carried the gene recessively....but more likely some did, some didn't. The parseltongue ability (as already mentioned) is another recessive genetic example Rowling uses.

Since we are all a mix of genes of this sort, it seems perfectly likely (even according to Rowling's universe) that some Peverell genes could have survived into the present day and if a family lineage could be traced, it seems very likely. Also, with purebloods being the purists that they are, it is very likely they had numerous recycling of chromosomes from both sides (which would seem the reason that the Gaunts are all a little 'off').

I am unfamiliar with how many base pairs remain clustered that would make up a gene and whether or not genes are passed intact. (I think it varies but I believe they are transmitted in their full sections.) I believe the splicing only occurs in certain coded sections between alleles, so it seems that the genes being made up of the alleles would also remain intact for the most part....I think there are just certain areas where mixing can occur. (But I am no expert.) It seems that when the whole chromosome is passed...the genes on that chromosome remain for the most part intact. Consequently certain traits would be passed down intact from way back and depending on their dominant or recessive coding they may or may not be expressed.

I watched an interesting documentary on Discovery channel about a year ago. It was about a corpse they had found in a peat bog somewhere in Great Britian.

The body turned out to be over 1000 years old. Some scientists decided to do a DNA profile and compare it to random people who lived within a certain area of where they found the body. Even some of the scientists gave DNA samples.

It turned out that one of the scientists was a direct descendant. So it seems that as long as your family has descendants you will carry traces of the same DNA.