He's probably the most mysterious of all the X-Men...the adamantium claws fused with his own bones that spring out at a moment's notice. But what is most impressive is the regeneration abilities that are the reason Wolverine was able to be fitted with his wonderful claws. It's a great idea...the ability to be able to heal yourself at an incredibly fast rate...you might not even be able to die. But that's another article. At the University of British Colombia two students, abiding by the alias' of Cyclops and Professor Charles Xavier have published a SATIRICAL paper in the Journal of Superhero Mutational Science addressing the genetics of regeneration and just how Wolverine ended up with his superpowers. It turns out that it's all due to the protein Howlett, taken from Wolverine's given name-James Howlett. According to the paper the protein is like that found in amphibians which causes limb regeneration-amblox. The two "proteins" are, according to the authors, potentially applicable for regenerative medicine for humans and mutants. There's nothing like the amount of effort that members of a fandom will put into actually understanding the basis of the "supernatural" found in their favorite books or movies. In 2012 a student at the University of Delaware, Andrea Klenotiz, submitted a six page paper detailing how the wizarding gene is inherited and why muggles exist. The paper outlines that the gene could be explained if it’s caused by a trinucleotide repeat, which is the repetition of three nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA — multiple times. Reading the papers...it almost convinces you that perhaps the genes and proteins could exist and that the supernatural world isn't that far away...but it's also an indicator of just how much we, as a culture, enjoy our stories. Maybe it makes it just a bit more real?