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Are Our Cells Our Own

Page history last edited by pinkhamc@... 1 year, 9 months ago

Are Our (or Your) Cells Our (or Your) Own?

 

This page is a work in progress. Not sure where it is going.

 

The cells of your body are "you." Or at least they make up "you" and without them you would not be "you." (2020 10 06)

 

But, if you have a bone marrow transplant, your blood cells and many of your other cells will thankfully change from your DNA to the DNA of the donor. You still have your body, your memories, your mind. So, do your cells determine you?

 

Of course they do. Long before the bone marrow transplant, your DNA interacted with the environment via epigenetic factors to make you. Note, your DNA was determined by your parents’ DNA which also interacted with the environment to make them, so in some ways beyond the obvious, who and what you are is influenced by who and what your parents and their parents experienced.

 

The new DNA from the donor is found primarily in the red bone marrow where the creation of new red and white blood cells and blood cells that give rise to platelets is around 283 billion per day (3.3 million per second—gives a new meaning to “tired blood”). This is by far the single, most prodigious category of cell division going on in your body at any time, which totals 330 billion cells per day. Division of all the other approximately 200 cell types in your body is only 0.6 million cells per second, and most of that is divided among several types of epithelial cells protecting exposed surfaces where wear is high1.

 

These new blood cells will make up about a third of the cells in your body at any given time. Thus, in a way, you are 2/3rds you and 1/3 the donor. But the donor’s 1/3 has considerably less influence on who you are than the 2/3rds that are not generated by the red bone marrow since blood is a fluid, not a solid like much of the rest of your body. (2022 05 16)

 

1https://www.sciencealert.com/your-body-makes-4-million-cells-a-second-and-most-of-them-are-blood.

 

Here is a cartoon that reflects this article sent from a long-time friend, Tim Twinam. I love it.

 

 

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