Sneezing at Bright Light

Your result, the one DNA position behind it, and what the research says.

7/10 confidence.

About Sneezing at Bright Light

Roughly a quarter of people sneeze when they move suddenly into bright light. The leading explanation is crossed wires: the nerve carrying the pupil's response to light runs close to the nerve that triggers sneezing, and a strong light signal spills across. This variant sits in a stretch of DNA between genes on chromosome 2 and shifts the odds of having the reflex. It is one of the oldest recorded human quirks and still one of the least understood, so a single position explains only a small part of it.

Good to know: About a quarter of people have the photic sneeze reflex. The leading explanation is signal crossover between two nearby nerves. This position shifts the odds only; most of the trait is still unexplained.

Fun fact: Aristotle wondered why sunlight makes people sneeze, and the question is still not fully settled.

Discovery: This variant was linked to the photic sneeze reflex in a large consumer genetics study in 2010.

The Variant

The single variant behind this trait

Gene: Near ZEB2

Variant (rsID): rs10427255

Location: Chr 2:145,367,955

dbSNP rs10427255

The studies

A genome-wide association study on photic sneeze reflex in the Chinese population (Wang M et al., Scientific reports, 2019)

Other lifestyle traits

Pain Sensitivity: A change in the sodium channel that pain-sensing nerves use to fire, linked to where your pain threshold sits.

Duffy Blood Group: The position that sets which of the two main Duffy forms sit on your red blood cells, one of the classical blood group systems.

Motion Sickness: A change in the promoter of an adrenaline receptor gene, linked to how easily travel brings on queasiness.

Back to All Traits

Content updated September 2026.

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