Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/I-am-Cancer-hear-me-roar-with-segue-into-Chimerism-and-Epigenetics-tp7586711.html
Glen/Nick -
>> Having said that, am I allowed to say, "Crap! I wish you didn't have cancer!'
> Of course. Thanks. But just to be argumentative,
...
> I am cancer. It's probably not true of all cancers, though.
I recently had a long conversation with a Muslim friend from Australia
who donated her bone marrow to her sister to replace hers after it was
deliberately destroyed by chemo/rad to stop *her* cancer.
This was against Islamic law but she and her family felt like they had
still done the right thing. She is now hyper aware that her sister is a
Chimera, though she didn't have the term for it. She believes that her
sister underwent a radical personality change after the
transplant/recovery and wants to attribute it to the "transplant". At
first I wanted to dismiss this but on a little reflection and study, I
am more sympathetic to her position.
The more I read about hematopoietic cell transplant and lateral genetic
transference, the curiouser it all gets! I feel like we need the
molecular biology equivalent of Oliver Sacks (RIP) in the house to bring
a more popular understanding to the table of this fascinating field!
I was fascinated as a child to learn about tree grafting in nut and
citrus orchards, and later organ transplants in humans, but this goes a
step further since it is roughly "systemic". This also lead me to
reflect on birth-chimeras where multiple zygotes fuse early on to yield
a single fetus and ultimately full human organism but with a mixture of
cells with filial genomics.
I have friends who are "mirror" twins who each have a third nipple on
opposite sides of their body (slightly lower than the conventional
location). They believed this to suggest that they had begun as
triplets and that there was such a fusion during the early embryological
process. I didn't recognize any other chimeric properties (sometimes
evidenced by piebald skin or hair markings).
This is NOT your father's Genetics! My father studied biology in the
late 1940s, my own molecular biology experience is roughly circa 1984,
and my daughter's PhD in molecular biology is only about 7 years old
now, yet *even her* "book larnin' " in the general field, and in
particular epigenetics is getting stale fast!
- Steve
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