Submitted 2 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/c3a1ee80-9fd6-41a1-8fc4-bb0967ed06da.jpeg
I think there was a similar case, but about the mother. The courts took her baby and she was on trial for kidnapping.
Eventually a geneticists saw it on the news and suggested she got tested again using DNA samples from other parts of her body and they found out she also was a chimera.
Some racism was involved as she was working class and black, so the courts were just looking for a reason to take her baby and throw her ass in jail…
Some racism was involved
Not surprised after reading the first paragraph
I remember that one, it was the first time I heard of this scenario. It really sucks for folks involved, but it is kind of interesting too.
Apparently this is more common with cats. If you see a cat with two different coat patterns, either divided down the middle or along the neck (as if they only had spare parts left at the cat factory), they may also be a chimera.
Cool looking cat. I wants one
I wonder… is this more common in all animals that have average litter size >= 2? Or is there something else special to cats that explains this phenomenon?
In-utero growth rate + chromosome counts play a big role. I admit, ashamedly, that I have largely forgotten the reason they matter, but they do.
Source, trust me bro
Half and half chimera is just the more unique variant, iirc, at least for humans. The more common type would just look splotchy if the different parts even happen to color differently. The patterns usually follow Blaschko’s lines but don’t have to.
There are also more basic forms where people will just have certain body parts with different DNA, like an extra blood type or other less consequential things.
Another fun-ish, kinda fucked up, weird story… There’s a woman, Henrietta Lacks, who had a biopsy for her cervical cancer in January of 1951 before passing in October of that year. These cells were found to be incredibly resilient and quick to replicate. Most cells only lasted a few days before dying, but hers seemed to be functionally immortal under controlled lab conditions.
So, unbeknownst to her as consent wasnt required for such things at the time, her cancer cells were cultured and grown into large samples to be used in research. Those samples were split off and passed off to other labs. They’ve since spread around the entire world for a ton of research and commercial purposes.
They were used in the development of the polio vaccine, for example, as well as having been used in research on cancer (obviously), AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic materials, gene mapping, etc. They are used to test safety of cosmetics as well. Approximately 11,000 patents involve these specific cancer cells.
In the 1970s, there was an incident where these cells contaminated other cell cultures, so the researchers needed DNA samples from the Henrietta’s family to differentiate her cells from the others. This is the first time anyone in her family learned that her cells had been used in research at all, let alone that her cells were being cloned and used in research and commercial product development across the entire world. It became a legal issue after this, and after a couple decades of litigation, it made it to the Supreme Court of California where they ruled that “discarded biological materials” is no longer ones property and could be commercialized freely. They continue to occasionally fight against aspects of her cells’ usage, and they’re are health privacy concerns for her family as well, but results have been mixed for them.
Henrietta the person died in 1951 at age 31, but her immortal cancer cells which still contain her full DNA sequence continue to live to this day, 75 years later. One source claims that as much as 50 million metric tons of tissue has been generated from these cells.
In the 1970s, there was an incident where these cells contaminated other cell cultures, so the researchers needed DNA samples from the Henrietta’s family to differentiate her cells from the others.
I don’t understand. First, what was the point? I doubt there was a way to split the sample attacked by a cancer cells, they probably weren’t going to recalibrate the transporter and untuvix them.
Second, weren’t there thousands of the copies of the sample? Why wouldn’t they compare it to one of them, instead of bothering the family?
That confused me as well. The stuff I read didn’t elaborate on how that would help.
I’m a data analyst at a medical nonprofit, primarily doing analyses on germline variants for rare forms of cancer. I’m new to this kind of work, but had a decent educational background in biology.
Something I’ve learned is that genetics are complicated as hell. A single gene can produce multiple different proteins, and proteins change over time due to somatic variation. Only 1% of the genome are protein coding, called exomes. Exomes can be affected by variations to start and stop codons, non coding regions, and untranslated regions. There are entire fields dedicated to studying genome-wide, exomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, phenomics, and probably several others that I don’t know about. The amount of data involved with these fields is in the tebibytes region. Have you ever seen a “small” 3GiB csv? I have. The filtered and cleaned data frames created by genetics are over 100 columns wide and have nearly 5 million entries.
There are companies creating artificial life by generating custom chromosomes. There’s a whole field of computer science dedicated to biological computing, using DNA as a storage medium. There are companies dedicated to simply classifying genes.
DNA is cool as hell.
If you really want to blow your mind, look into the theoretical alternatives to DNA. we are all taught about RNA and how it is a precursor to DNA, but what if it went another way? Look up PNA, PNA-O, or even GNA. If life existed on other worlds, there is a decent chance it follows an xNA structure, but not necessarily DNA.
There are companies creating artificial life by generating custom chromosomes.
My dude, not a fun thing to think about who might have control over that. Is it a musk, zuck, cook or epstein?
No, none of those guys are involved afaik. The one that made the first breakthrough in artificial life is ran by the same dude who competed with the Human Genome Project to map 99% of the human genome. They modified an extremely simple bacteria that only had something like 300 base pairs
That’s too much science. We, as a people, need less sci- wait, no. No, no. Uh - We need bett-er? Science? Hmm.
Look just make it an animated cartoon with fun music for now and we’ll circle back.
The must of truly love that woman to keep getting tested. The average man would nope out once it came back kid wasn’t his.
The must of truly
Quick! Raise both arms!
Sometimes you just know when your best friend is telling the truth. :)
The child of a ghost who never got to exist
Something kinda romantic about that actually…it’s like he gets to live on genetically and be raised by his brother to be the person he was aways supposed to be.
Reminds me of when President Vic Michaelis asked Hank about DNA stuff
Well, who’s the biggest person? That one got the most DNA obviously.
Yes, but the question goes much deeper from there though ending up at chimeras.
Chimerism is weird and it can do really weird shit to your body
“Uncle”
iThinkDifferentThanU@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Can’t even trust a brother you ate in utero
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
her eggs were cheating