Invasive stem cells - Whose body is it anyway?
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In the last blog entry, I mentioned that the genetic material of parents could get involved in ensuring that their offspring passed on gametes with good genetic integrity. I just ran across this information from 1998 that takes intergenerational meddling one step further. In this case, the woman seems to be uniquely affected and the in-laws get into the act.
Women take up stem cells from their children, thereby inheriting genetic material from their husband/partner. These stem cells can persist in the mother for decades. The same has been shown for bone marrow transplant patients and must be true of other types of organ and tissue transplants as well.
It strikes me that it must also be possible that stem cells get passed from the mother to her offspring, so I guess she gets to meddle as well. Twins also must exchange stem cells. I wonder how many generations and branches of our (maternal) extended families are represented in the cells of our bodies.
Stem cells have been observed to travel between different tissue types, so it is theoretically possible as well that there is exchange of cells between the soma and the germ line (i.e. body cells and gamete cell lines). Now, if you skip over some gaps in knowledge and make some fairly significant leaps of logic, you will be able to explain biologically how the biblical story of a virgin mother giving birth to a male offspring could theoretically occur.
Is biology cool, or what?!
If some you wish to do a literature review on stem cells rather than epigenetics, I will certainly consider any topics you come up with. It would be best if it incorporated some aspect of epigenetic gene regulation, but examples of exchange between soma and germ line would be extremely interesting.
In the last blog entry, I mentioned that the genetic material of parents could get involved in ensuring that their offspring passed on gametes with good genetic integrity. I just ran across this information from 1998 that takes intergenerational meddling one step further. In this case, the woman seems to be uniquely affected and the in-laws get into the act.
Women take up stem cells from their children, thereby inheriting genetic material from their husband/partner. These stem cells can persist in the mother for decades. The same has been shown for bone marrow transplant patients and must be true of other types of organ and tissue transplants as well.
It strikes me that it must also be possible that stem cells get passed from the mother to her offspring, so I guess she gets to meddle as well. Twins also must exchange stem cells. I wonder how many generations and branches of our (maternal) extended families are represented in the cells of our bodies.
Stem cells have been observed to travel between different tissue types, so it is theoretically possible as well that there is exchange of cells between the soma and the germ line (i.e. body cells and gamete cell lines). Now, if you skip over some gaps in knowledge and make some fairly significant leaps of logic, you will be able to explain biologically how the biblical story of a virgin mother giving birth to a male offspring could theoretically occur.
Is biology cool, or what?!
If some you wish to do a literature review on stem cells rather than epigenetics, I will certainly consider any topics you come up with. It would be best if it incorporated some aspect of epigenetic gene regulation, but examples of exchange between soma and germ line would be extremely interesting.
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