strangecell (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} strangecell) wrote,@ 2008-03-05 15:44:00 |
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Yet another fascinating scientific realm to explore
Just read a amazing article in the January 2008 edition of Scientific American (subscription required). It presented a fascinating biological process that I had no idea even existed: microchimerism.
Microchimerism refers to the long-term existence of foreign cells in a person's body, most-notably arising from two particular situations: 1) maternal cells that cross the placental barrier to live with the fetus and 2) fetal cells that cross the other way to live in the body of the mother.
While reading a book on stem cells, I had only recently learned that human immune systems can learn to tolerate foreign cells under certain conditions, but it had never occurred to me that this could happen frequently under normal conditions. But evidence is growing that this is indeed the case, and all of us may contain small amounts of cells from our mothers, and child-bearing women may also have additional populations of cells from their children!
This opens up a whole new realm of questions and possibilities. As discussed in the article by J. Lee Nelson, who has been doing research in this area for some time, there may be both beneficial and harmful consequences from these biological immigrants. Harmful consequences can include attacks by immune cells (foreign on host or vice versa), which may explain diseases that were previously thought to be autoimmune in nature. Beneficial consequences could also result from immune responses in the foreign population that supplement those of the host.
A lot remains to be understood about what exactly is going on here, but like epigenetics, another recently discovered process, microchimerism promises to simultaneously complicate and enrich the increasingly fascinating and bewildering world of cell biology.
Just read a amazing article in the January 2008 edition of Scientific American (subscription required). It presented a fascinating biological process that I had no idea even existed: microchimerism.
Microchimerism refers to the long-term existence of foreign cells in a person's body, most-notably arising from two particular situations: 1) maternal cells that cross the placental barrier to live with the fetus and 2) fetal cells that cross the other way to live in the body of the mother.
While reading a book on stem cells, I had only recently learned that human immune systems can learn to tolerate foreign cells under certain conditions, but it had never occurred to me that this could happen frequently under normal conditions. But evidence is growing that this is indeed the case, and all of us may contain small amounts of cells from our mothers, and child-bearing women may also have additional populations of cells from their children!
This opens up a whole new realm of questions and possibilities. As discussed in the article by J. Lee Nelson, who has been doing research in this area for some time, there may be both beneficial and harmful consequences from these biological immigrants. Harmful consequences can include attacks by immune cells (foreign on host or vice versa), which may explain diseases that were previously thought to be autoimmune in nature. Beneficial consequences could also result from immune responses in the foreign population that supplement those of the host.
A lot remains to be understood about what exactly is going on here, but like epigenetics, another recently discovered process, microchimerism promises to simultaneously complicate and enrich the increasingly fascinating and bewildering world of cell biology.
