I’m a Chimera, You’re a Chimera.

 

Just last night I was reading the archives of bookofjoe.com and came across one of Joe’s BehindtheMedspeak Posts from August 28th, 2004.

In Short :

Fetal cells that resemble stem cells have been found in the organs of women after they have given birth, raising the possibility that the cells could be removed and used to treat diseases.

The woman who discovered this is Dr. Diana Bianchi, chief of the division of medical genetics at Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston.

I found this quite interesting, so you can imagine how funny I thought it, when I came across an article this morning at Discovermagazine.com titled :

You Are A Chimera (Thanks to Mom)

So what’s a Chimera? According to Wikipedia.com it’s :

In zoology, a chimera is an animal that has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes; if the different cells emerged from the same zygote, it is called a mosaicism.

Chimeras are formed from four parent cells (two fertilized eggs or early embryos fuse together) or from three parent cells (a fertilized egg is fused with an unfertilized egg or a fertilized egg is fused with an extra sperm). Each population of cells keeps its own character and the resulting animal is a mixture of mis-matched parts.

According to the Discover Article “Scientists recently found that a small number of maternal cells can persist in a woman’s offspring for decades or longer.”

So what does that mean?

Although researchers have suspected that maternal cells might play a role in provoking immunologic problems, this study found that in individuals with type 1 diabetes, at least, those cells might actually be lending a helping hand.

It also means our mother’s are always with us.

Think back to all the things you’ve done out of your mom’s line of sight…you thought she didn’t know?

Well I’m here to tell you, she was there and saw the whole thing!