WEBVTT - Microchimerism: The Mother Inside You 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.400 Works dot Com. Yea, Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.360 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie. 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.760 We often think about ourselves as as a whole, and 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.680 we've we've discussed that before in the past, and sort 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:24.520 of the fallacy that we think of ourselves as this 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.960 one body, this one autonomous thing, but of course we 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:32.839 are also a host of smaller creatures living inside us. 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:34.760 You can say, you can also go far to say 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:37.479 that our our cellular communities are nothing more than than 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.120 just that communities of individuals that make up this whole. 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:42.680 And in this episode of stuff Will in your mind, 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:46.800 we're gonna throw another log onto that fire that illuminates 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:51.080 the the multiple aspects of who we are. That's right. 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:56.000 It is the chimera, which is this idea that comes 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.720 from Greek mythology. We're talking about a fire breathing creature 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.680 that was part serpent, part lion, and part goat. And 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.679 in many ways, when we talk about being host and 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.200 and having some sort of micro biome in us, that 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.720 perhaps gaming the way that we work physically and mentally, 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:17.240 we are these kind of part line goat Chimera. Yeah. 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.800 According to Homer, Um it just had the body of 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:22.760 the gigantic goat, the hind parts of the serpent, the 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:24.959 head of a lion, other depictions. You see, it is 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.280 having head of all three. Really, it's kind of train 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:29.360 wreck of a monster. It's not it's not not the 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.679 most elegant. Uh. It was said to be the progeny 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:35.959 of two other monsters, um a kidney beautiful woman up top, 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.160 serpent down below, and Typhon, which is a nebulous gigantic 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:41.679 form composed of hundreds of dragons, heads and serpent, arms 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.160 and legs, breathe fire and love. And it was created 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:46.559 by Gaya after the defeat of the Titans to assail 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:48.920 the forces of the gods. And in the Chimera had 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.720 all these monsters siblings, including Cerebus, the Ninian Lion, the Hydra, 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:57.280 and the Sphinx. Is eventually slain by Bellerophon Astride the Pegasus, 0:01:57.360 --> 0:01:59.920 and in medieval already comes to symbolize the complex na 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:02.960 nature of evil. Okay, and we we wanted to bring 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.120 up the Chimera in both its mythological form and in 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.800 the form of animals because we're going to get to it. 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.240 But there's some really cool things going on on a 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.560 celegular level that sort of brings into question who we are. 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:17.280 We always bring this up, like, am I really me? 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.760 Am I? Parts of me? Um? What is mean? What's this? 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.720 My brain and my body? Am I a brain? Body? 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:25.239 Am I the me that I think I am? Or 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.200 am I to me that exists under the surface of 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.440 conscious thought? Well? Or am I the me that is 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.680 really accumulation of actually other people in other people's cells? 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.600 How could that be? Yes, we'll find out. But first 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:44.000 let's talk about some naturally occurring chimeras. We're talking about slime, mold, 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.000 and corals. Those are far less ominous than the fire 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:51.200 breathing kind, right and um. Chimeric can also refer to 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.760 an animal that has two or more different sets of 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.320 genetically distinct cells working together. So we have a couple 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:01.399 of man made examples. One is a pig that researchers 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.600 at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota had created a pig 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.680 with human blood pumping through its veins, and some of 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:13.480 the cells merged together, creating pig human cell hybrid cells. Here. 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.840 So what we're talking about is this idea that you 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:20.600 can have an experiment that could give scientists bet our 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.560 understanding of how viral infections can pass from one animal 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:27.600 to humans, like HIV. It's not just like, hey, let's 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:29.800 cross a pig's blood with a humans blood and have 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:31.920 some fun here, you know. It kind of sounds like 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:34.400 it's a way to to create a ready source of 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:36.480 human blood and then you just mark the pigs in 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.640 when it's time for a transfusion. That would work too. Yeah, 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.600 it's kind of monstrous on all fronts. But I mean, 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.320 but again, we get into this idea that we're dealing with, 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.160 this initial idea that chimera as a monster, that any 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:51.920 kind of form that involves bits of others is a hybrid, 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:54.880 and it's weird and it's gross and probably against God's 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.840 natural order. But it's we discussing here. Hybrids do occur 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.960 within the natural limits of life, and in a sense, 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:06.600 we are all chimeras. It's right, micro chimers, which we'll 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.120 talk about in a moment. But I wanted to bring 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:14.120 up this particularly uh pure form of chimera in the 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.760 form of humans. And uh, this became known because in 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:22.880 a woman named Jane found out that she needed a 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:27.760 kidney transplant. An amazing story, all right, So she has 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.960 her son, she has three sons, and uh, they give 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.640 some blood samples to see if she would be a 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:36.599 good match to be a kidney downer. Well what comes 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:40.599 back is that, okay, um, what you know, miss Jane 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.239 or whatever your full name is, because that's never actually 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.720 told obviously for her privacy. But what comes back is, 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:48.640 miss Jane, we want to tell you that you could 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:53.000 not possibly be the biological mother of these two of 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.719 your three sons, which to her is sort of like, 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.440 what are you talking about? Because that it either means oh, 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:00.880 I'm not who I think I am or the children 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:03.320 were swapped out in the hospital. You can just imagine 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.080 the various scenarios that would roll around in your head 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.520 and wrestle with each other when the doctors telling you that, yeah, 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.080 and she's saying, no, I'm the biological mother these children. 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.160 Trust me. I had them. They came out of my uterus. 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.000 I have this memory of it. And they keep saying, well, 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.119 are you sure you know? Maybe they were switched at birth? 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.599 And it took the researchers two years to figure this out. 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:28.960 But Margot Crestfall, she was a daughter. She is a 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.239 doctor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston figured 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:36.440 out that Jane is a chimera, a mixture of two individuals, 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.360 and what we're talking about are non identical twin sisters 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.559 who fused in the womb and grew into a single body. Yes, 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:50.040 she dwight shrewded her twin. Well, it's it's almost crazier 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:51.440 than that. It's like, it's not just like she be. 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:54.760 Those two people became one, you know. It's like it's 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:59.040 like the fly Jeff Goldbloom in a telepod with a fly, 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.640 and they emerged, the one being on the other end, 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:04.960 essentially a chimera. And here we have in the telepod 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.520 of the womb, these two individuals merged together and become 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:12.200 a single organism, a single individual. Yes, so I mean 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.359 she is She's technically a tetra game medic chimera, and 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:18.720 that is a person whose body is made up from 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.800 two genetically distinct lines of cells derived from a total 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:26.320 of four gamme eats, eggs, and sperm. So the cells 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.719 from only one twin have come to dominate and Jane's blood, 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:32.920 so the tissue used in the tissue typing in the 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.360 test for her kidney. That's what we're talking about here. 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.240 In her other tissues, including her ovaries, cells of both 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:43.200 types of lived alongside each other. And that accounts for 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:45.600 the genetics of her three sons, because one came from 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:49.400 an egg derived from the twin who cells dominate Jane's blood, 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.400 while the two brother the other two brothers came from 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.680 eggs derived from the other twin cells. Wow. So it's 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.159 so even though one of the twins ended up being 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:03.240 dominant in the individual, the other twin managed to have children. 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.239 Like that's just like almost almost like a ghostly sense, 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.200 almost like from beyond the grave. Well, that's what's so 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.600 amazing about this, this idea that you could carry with 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:18.360 you someone else's cells and that Yeah, there's just this 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:22.320 ghostly like sort of association that that would be informing 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.800 also your children, your children's genetics. Uh so that that 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.360 is an extreme case of this. Imagine your your siblings 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.840 and you both have the same mother, but you have 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.440 two different biological mothers, but those two biological mothers are 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.920 the same mother. It. Wow, it's really confusing. It's a 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:46.400 bit of a head trip. But now um ivf in 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.880 vitro fertilization increases the odds of having for tunnel twins 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:54.560 about thirtyfold and is also associated with an increased risk 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.440 of chimera. So it may not be I mean, they 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.840 don't have a ton of research on on this so far, 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.120 but it may not just be so crazy going forward, 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:07.640 since IVF has been a pretty good option out there 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.640 for a couple of decades. Now. Yeah, but this is 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:15.400 an extreme example of cells dominating your body. But it 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:17.640 turns out that all of us have cells from someone 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.200 else hanging out, which seems like an incredible statement, but 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:23.280 it is true. And in this we're getting into the 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.960 realm of microchimerism. Yeah. So this is when you possess 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:28.920 a small number of cells in your body that are 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:32.080 not genetically your own. And this was first noticed in 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:36.200 nine when a researcher at Stanford University found a few 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.600 cells with Y sex chromosomes and a pregnant woman's blood 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.160 and those cells had to have come from her son 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:50.400 since women have only X chromosomes. She had male chromosomes 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:52.560 in her body even though she's a pregnant female, right, 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:54.720 So that that was the first inkling that something was 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.880 going on. Um, so it turns out that all pregnant 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.760 women carry some these are called fetals els by the way, 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.160 and DNA. Up to six percent of the free floating 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.640 DNA in the mother's blood plasma comes from the fetus, 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.080 and after the baby is born, those numbers plummet, but 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.719 some cells remain and they actually just don't hang out there. 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:15.800 They they do things in the body. And we'll talk 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:17.840 a little bit more about that. Yeah, there's a wonderful 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:22.040 quote in this New Scientists article by Nancy Shoot Beyond Birth, 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:25.160 and it goes as follows. She says, mother and child 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.960 are engaged in a silent chemical conversation throughout pregnancy, with 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.880 bits of genetic material and cells passing not only from 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.120 mother to child, but also from child to mother. That's 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.640 right in that two way street is the pacenta, right um. 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.280 The pacenta is an organ it's built of cells from 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.400 both the mother and the fetus, and it serves just 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:46.520 as a reminder for everybody as a conduit for the 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.560 exchange of nutrients, gases, and waste. And so it's porous, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.720 and so you do have the cells um from from 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.920 mother and child passing between each other. That's one of 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:58.199 the ways that you can pass cells to each other, 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.120 kind of a cellular backwash. I like that. Yeah, so 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:04.960 you're backwash. After cells crossover, some get rounded up and 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:08.880 killed by the new host immune system, but some of 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.960 them take root in the body. They burrow into the heart, liver, kidneys, 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:17.559 spleen skin, pancreas, gall bladdering testines, among other places. They're 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:19.800 kind of like squatters, really like they are clearly and 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.000 not supposed to be there. Police round up the ones 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.400 they can, but communities begin to take root in certain 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.720 you know, abandoned buildings and back alleys. Yeah, and some 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.760 of them become really productive members of body society. And 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.680 this will discuss somebody not um Now. The fetal cells 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:40.400 can also be passed through mother to infant, through nursing, 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:45.640 and also through transfusions and transplants. We're talking about bone 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:48.760 marrow transplants and organ transplants, and that sort of brings 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.920 up into question, you know, well, how do these cells 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.960 figure into someone who's not even related to the person 0:10:56.080 --> 0:11:00.040 who you know, the organ was transplanted in. And we 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.160 cannot answer these questions right now. In fact, this discovery 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:07.880 of microchimerism actually brings up a lot more questions than answers. 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.440 But it's pretty fascinating stuff. Let's take a quick break 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:13.080 and when we get back, we're going to talk about 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.680 how those fetal cells hang out in your body and 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:30.360 what they do. All right, we're back. Microchimerism. It's pretty nutty, 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.360 it yeah. In fact, last year it was found that 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:38.760 male DNA was discovered in the female brain, and this 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:41.240 led everybody to understand that fetal cells are able to 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:44.200 cross the blood brain barrier. Now, this is that that 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:46.719 sort of membrane that keeps out sort of the bad 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.680 things that make sure that you don't get toxic chemicals 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:52.679 that are traveling to your brain and and messing up 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.920 the works in there um. But this fetal cell being 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:58.520 able to cross the blood brain barrier was found in 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:03.040 Researchers at the Department Biochemistry at the University of Alberta 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:07.360 examined brain autopsy specimens from fifty nine women. They had 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.120 died between the ages of thirty two and a hundred 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.880 and one. Now, male microcomerism, as it's called in this case, 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.400 was detected in sixty three percent of the subjects and 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.880 was distributed in multiple brain regions and was potentially persistent 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.720 throughout the human lifespans. Of the sixty percent of the subjects, 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.600 the oldest female in whom male fetal DNA was detected 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.760 in the brain was ninety four years old. Now this 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.720 is kind of a huge thing because they had known 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.160 that had migrated to different parts of the body, but 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:40.280 they did not know what it was doing in the 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:42.480 brain and if it even acted on the brain, and 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.640 that is still a big question mark. But they have 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.480 looked at Alzheimer's disease because they know that it's more 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:53.240 common in women who have had multiple pregnancies, and they 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:55.280 thought that they would find that the number of fetal 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.319 sales would be a lot greater in women with Alzheimer's 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.000 compared to those who had no evidence for any sort 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:04.559 of neurological disorders or disease. But this is the weird 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.760 thing that the opposite was true of what they thought 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.040 was going to happen. There were fewer fetal derived cells 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.720 and women with Alzheimer's. So they're still trying to figure 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:16.440 out what sort of connection that might have. And you know, 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:18.520 long term, there might be some sort of information about 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.200 how those how those cells act on the brain, and 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:24.079 you know, you have to also consider that in animal 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:28.040 studies that microchimerate cells were found in maternal brains where 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.680 they became nerve cells, it became active members of that 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:38.280 brain society, suggesting that they might have a functionality integrated. Now, 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.720 of course, in all this you have to avoid the 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.560 temptation to fall into a magical understanding of what's happening. 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:47.920 When when we were researching this, I kept finding people 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:50.200 talking about some of these studies on message boards and 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:53.600 getting a little sentimental and at times a little goofy 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.120 about what it meant. Uh. And certainly you see that 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.800 even with with ideas of organ transplants and limb transplants 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:01.640 and mean sort of the idea that you know, go 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:03.360 back to the little horror movie with Michael Caine. You 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:05.560 get a hand transplanted onto your body and it's the 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:07.600 hand of a criminal, and suddenly you're gonna do criminal 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.360 things because it's the criminal's body part, that's the criminals hand, 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.439 and now it's part of you. So you have to again, 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:16.800 you have to put that out of your head. Um. 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.880 And there's plenty of weird, almost magical seeming stuff that's 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.240 going on anyway, without bringing all of that nonsense and 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.000 the equation. It's true, and you know, at some level though, 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.240 it is symbolic and it's kind of nice to think that, 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:30.920 you know, your mom is always carrying a bit of 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.880 you around, and you're always carrying around some of your mom. 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:37.640 But then but but again, it's just it's selves, it's 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.560 not it sells. But here's this just a complicated Like 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.960 there's a little her in your flesh pocket on your side, 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:45.520 and she's looking up at you like telling you to 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:51.560 eat your piece. Totally is right now my flesh pocket. Thanks, Yeah, 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:57.080 hey mom um. So here's here's something to complicated. There's 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:00.800 a possibility that sells from an older sibling residing in 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.880 the mother may find their way back across the placenta 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.560 to a younger sibling. Now that's where it just gets 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.280 kind of gross. Like, here's the weird thing, Like, it's 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.320 very possible that that I have not only my mom 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:17.600 cells floating around, but my brothers and my daughters. Which 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:19.800 is fine, I mean, obviously it's all working out. But 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.320 with your daughter, I mean obviously there's a stronger connective. 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:24.760 But you're you've discussed before how you and your brother 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:29.200 are kind of different organisms, right, I mean you're rather different. Well, yeah, 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:31.600 of course we're different in many ways. But it is 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:33.760 kind of interesting to me as at the second born. 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.360 It's always like, man, seriously, you always get like, you know, 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:42.800 second banana hand me down cells, right, thanks a lot. 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.480 Uh No, twins, of course, identical twins can also exchange 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.880 micro comeric cells through the sheriff of sentence, so us 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.280 I don't think anything that's shocking, especially since we've already 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.720 stablished they can merge together into one organism. Yeah, you know, 0:15:57.200 --> 0:15:59.480 I don't put anything past them, exactly. You gotta watch 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.480 out for the twins. They'll do it before you're born. 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:03.520 If there are any twins out there listening, don't do 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.040 it later. So much hard to absorb each other or 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:08.960 across cells. Absorb each other or across cells. I mean, 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:10.640 both are a little more difficult and a little more 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:12.840 problematic if you do it as adults. It's true outside 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.840 the womb, that is, there's a menial logistics there. Um. 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.920 So here's some also interesting thing. There's evidence for competition 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:24.200 between cells from from grandmother in infant within the mother. Yeah. 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:26.720 So that's where it gets a little dicey, and that's 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.920 when we start to talk about autoimmune issues. Yeah, because 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.520 we have. One of the problems with the autoimmune situation 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.000 is that there's the theory is that you have essentially 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.920 alien cells in the body. In the immune system detects 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.520 alien cells, they're going to fight against them in the 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.160 same way that they would have destroyed a number of 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:48.200 them immediately following the birth of the child. So you 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.680 get that, you know, the problem of an autoimmune defense 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.240 network attacking the body itself and all the complications that 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.120 arise from that. Yeah, I mean because some autommune diseases, 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.400 which current women three times more than in men, are 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:03.840 thought to be associated with this problem, right, this sort 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.560 of they're not assimilating, right, um, the Civil War in 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:09.959 the Yeah, they're trying to figure out like why are 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.840 you here? Should you be here? Um? And that's when 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.919 you see sort of things like multiple multiple sclorious as 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:20.919 being exacerbated by this issue of fetal cells. Now, the 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:25.359 good news is that, um, these fetal cells can kind 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:29.000 of act like stem cells depending on where they are, Uh, 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.840 they can actually help to repair damage tissue. And they're 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:37.560 essentially a transplant of younger, healthier cells in depleted organs, 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.440 So they might help protect against certain types of cancer. 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:44.359 So women with breast cancer, for instance, they generally have 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:48.600 lower levels of microclimerrism than women who don't develop disease, 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.320 and the suggests a possible role for fetal cells and 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.920 helping to detect and destroy tumors because if you think 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.640 about it, uh, those microclimeric cells from a pregnancy, they're 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.560 recognized by the mom's immune system is belonging to the 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:07.320 mother since they're genetically half identical to the mother, so 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.440 they get a pass. So they're they're sort of foreign 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.280 to the immune system, but you know, because of the 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.600 father's contribution. But they also this is the idea, they 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:19.320 may prime the immune system to be alert for cells 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.720 that are similar to the self but with genetic differences. 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.159 So the idea is that having the presence of microchlimeric 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.840 cells and the body could kind of ferret out cancer 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.240 cells and then stem the growth of any tumors. Sort 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.200 of like, hey, we're on the alert for you, but 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.159 we're also and you're fine, you get a pass, but 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:43.080 these other guys they're not passing the test. So sometimes 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:45.720 hand me down. That stuff is really good stuff. That's 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:48.160 the thing. Sometimes you can really make something out of it. Yeah, 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.680 I mean, it's really cool and Nancy shoot, you had 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.720 mentioned before in her Beyond Birth article says that fetal 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:55.760 cells also appeared to migrate to injury sites and have 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.800 been found in patients with thyroid and liver damage where 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:03.680 they had morphed into organ cells. Wow, so like you can, Yeah, 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:05.679 you can, on a very soular level, you can get 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:09.360 into this idea that my daughter is healing me, my 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.440 my my son is healing my body well. And it's 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.400 interesting that you say that because there was one account 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:16.800 I can't remember which article, but one of them had 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:19.000 said that there was someone who was going through cancer 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.840 treatments and they kept that in mind. My son is 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:24.800 helping to heal me through this. His cells are combating 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.560 the cancer cells. And yes, there's a bit of magical 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:31.639 thinking to that, but it's sort of lovely. Yeah, just 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.800 don't let it fill into like full on cannibalism, because 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:37.520 I'd be like, I'm feeling at they're on a little 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.600 thick here. But I bet if I ate the kid's arm, 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:48.359 then I maybe get a replenishment. It won't work. Messy defects. Okay. Yeah, Um, 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.200 so of course we have to to start thinking about 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:53.399 this in a future sense and One of the ways 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:57.560 that researchers and scientists are is to actually look at dogs, 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:00.960 because it turns out microchimerism is present in some dogs, 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:04.359 and now makes setting the condition a lot easier because 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.439 you're talking about lifespans ten to twenty years as opposed 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.679 to seventy eighty years. So they begin to kind of 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:14.000 look at what that might mean, um, to have these 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:18.520 cells acting like stem cells, or even acting against the museum, 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.520 acting against museums, acting about against the immune system, and 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.480 then how does this affect the world of human cloning. Well, 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.680 it's not as straightforward as we thought, right, yeah, because 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:30.560 it's it's one thing. Because again, we we have this 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:33.280 this notion that we get in our heads that that 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:35.680 I am this one product and if you distole me 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.479 down on these cells, on this DNA, on this person, 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.760 and then if we can just recreate that data, then 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.480 we can recreate, at least in a bodily sense, we 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.760 can recreate ourselves. But now you're having to take into account. 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.600 I mean, we've discussed, um, you know, all the microbes 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:52.960 that live inside us, and now we have to take 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:57.199 into account different cellular communities from other individuals that make 0:20:57.280 --> 0:20:59.679 up who we are, how do you replicate that in 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:04.399 a awning scenario? Right, and not to mention the microbiota 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:08.760 that exists within everyone that is also again influencing how 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:11.400 we moved through the world and what sort of diseases 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:15.560 we may or may not get. Also have the genetics, right, Yeah, Well, 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.119 it's like with with cloning. It's um it reminds me 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.840 of the movie The Boys from Brazil based on the book, 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.480 where you had a plot to clone Hitler and it's 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.359 the plot really has a has some fun with the 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:29.679 idea of well, you would have to not only have 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.160 a genetic duplicate, you would have to then recreate all 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:37.159 the circumstances that made that person who they were. And 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.720 uh in the film sort of operates on the idea that, well, 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:42.040 the genetic side is simple to genetic side is just 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.080 pretty straightforward. But it's that conditioning that's where the problem lies. 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.120 But we're saying more and more that the genetic side 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:52.119 of things, the cellular side of things is almost equally 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:56.120 complicated if you were actually trying to replicate an individual. Right, 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:58.800 So this idea that we're just unique and we're just 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:03.240 sort of preset with this program at birth, it's following 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:05.720 away away, because now we all realize that we really 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:09.640