Current Events > When a DNA Test Says You're a Younger Man, Who Lives 5,000 Miles Away

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/dna-bone-marrow-transplant-crime-lab.html

After a bone marrow transplant, a man with leukemia found that his donors DNA traveled to unexpected parts of his body. A crime lab is now studying the case.

Three months after his bone marrow transplant, Chris Long of Reno, Nev., learned that the DNA in his blood had changed. It had all been replaced by the DNA of his donor, a German man he had exchanged just a handful of messages with.
Hed been encouraged to test his blood by a colleague at the Sheriffs Office, where he worked. She had an inkling this might happen. Its the goal of the procedure, after all: Weak blood is replaced by healthy blood, and with it, the DNA it contains.
But four years after his lifesaving procedure, it was not only Mr. Longs blood that was affected. Swabs of his lips and cheeks contained his DNA but also that of his donor. Even more surprising to Mr. Long and other colleagues at the crime lab, all of the DNA in his semen belonged to his donor. I thought that it was pretty incredible that I can disappear and someone else can appear, he said.
Mr. Long had become a chimera, the technical term for the rare person with two sets of DNA. The word takes its name from a fire-breathing creature in Greek mythology composed of lion, goat and serpent parts. Doctors and forensic scientists have long known that certain medical procedures turn people into chimeras, but where exactly a donors DNA shows up beyond blood has rarely been studied with criminal applications in mind.

Tens of thousands of people get bone marrow transplants every year, for blood cancers and other blood diseases including leukemia, lymphoma and sickle cell anemia. Though its unlikely that any of them would end up as the perpetrator or victim of a crime, the idea that they could intrigued Mr. Longs colleagues at the Washoe County Sheriffs Department, who have been using their (totally innocent) colleague in IT as a bit of a human guinea pig.

Where will the DNA go?
The implications of Mr. Longs case, which was presented at an international forensic science conference in September, have now captured the interest of DNA analysts far beyond Nevada.
The average doctor does not need to know where a donors DNA will present itself within a patient. Thats because this type of chimerism is not likely to be harmful. Nor should it change a person. Their brain and their personality should remain the same, said Andrew Rezvani, the medical director of the inpatient Blood & Marrow Transplant Unit at Stanford University Medical Center.

He added that patients also sometimes ask him what it means for a man to have a womans chromosomes in their bloodstream or vice versa. It doesnt matter, he said.
But for a forensic scientist, its a different story. The assumption among criminal investigators as theygather DNA evidence from a crime scene is that each victim and each perpetrator leaves behind a single identifying code not two, including that of a fellow who is 10 years younger and lives thousands of miles away. And so Renee Romero, who ran the crime lab at the Washoe County Sheriffs Office, saw an opportunity when her friend and colleague told her that his doctor had found a suitable match on a donor website and he would be undergoing a bone marrow transplant.
We need to swab the heck out of you before you have this procedure to see how this DNA takes over your body, she recalled telling him.
Mr. Long agreed. He welcomed an intriguing distraction from his diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes, both of which impair the production of healthy blood cells.

At the time, he said, I didnt even know if I would live.

Four years later, with Mr. Long in remission and back at work, Ms. Romeros experiment persisted, aided by her crime lab colleagues. Within four months of the procedure, Mr. Longs blood had been replaced by his donors blood. Swabs collected from his lip, cheek and tongue showed that these also contained his donors DNA, with the percentages rising and falling over the years. Of the samples collected, only his chest and head hair were unaffected. The most unexpected part was that four years after the procedure, the DNA in his semen had been entirely replaced by his donors.
We were kind of shocked that Chris was no longer present at all, said Darby Stienmetz, a criminalist at the Washoe County Sheriffs Office.
If another patient responded similarly to a transplant and that person went on to commit a crime, it could mislead investigators, said Brittney Chilton, a criminalist at the Sheriffs Office forensic science division.

more @ link

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Imagine being black, receiving this DNA altering procedure from an Asian donor, have a baby and then going WTF at birth

assuming no prior knowledge of any of this

ToPoPO posted...

Imagine being black, receiving this DNA altering procedure from an Asian donor, have a baby and then going WTF at birth

assuming no prior knowledge of any of this

... Yeah now I'm curious about that.

Also, brb getting bone marrow transplants from cis women so I can tell bigots to shove it.

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Some people got two sets of DNA depending on where you take it, it is called chimera.

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boxington posted...

We were kind of shocked that Chris was no longer present at all,

brings a whole new meaning to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment

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bump

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Could having a woman's bone marrow effect a man's semen?

So...If he got a woman pregnant. It dna wise would be the donor's kid. He can never pass his dna on. Also what would this do to a tran-person body?

JoeDangIt posted...

Could having a woman's bone marrow effect a man's semen?

I do not want a baby growing in my ballsack.

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008Zulu posted...

I do not want a baby growing in my ballsack.

Someone doesn't know how babies are conceived.

JoeDangIt posted...

Could having a woman's bone marrow effect a man's semen?

Maybe. Outside of causing all his potential children to be female it probably wouldn't be much different than having your sperm dna replaced with another guy.

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wtf theyre finding this out now?!
bone marrow been happening for decades!

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I wonder if we took 5 morons and injected them with Elon Musk bone marrow. If it would have any effect on their intelligence.

Abiz_ posted...

Someone doesn't know how babies are conceived.

Someone does not know how jokes work.

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This is how you create the ultimate assassin.

ToPoPO posted...

Imagine being black, receiving this DNA altering procedure from an Asian donor, have a baby and then going WTF at birth

assuming no prior knowledge of any of this

wouldn't that make more sense the other way around

black traits are dominant

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HylianFox posted...

black traits are dominant

Do you know if that even matters? If it did. I would think Bone marrow transplant wouldn't work on black people.

It's both good and bad that the crime people are looking into this. If this is the case with a lot of transplant people who got locked up on DNA evidence, this throws that whole thing into question

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I'm very curious about how this affects procreation after the fact as well

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HBOSS posted...

wtf theyre finding this out now?!
bone marrow been happening for decades!

They already knew about it. It's just that there's not really been many studies in terms of criminal investigation. They even did a bunch of different DNA swabs before he had the transplant because they wanted to see what it affected.

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Male and female DNA.
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So if his DNA is rewritten, would his appearance change?

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ROBANN_88 posted...

So if his DNA is rewritten, would his appearance change?

no. i don't think it works like that. he might be a genetic chimera, but i don't think it will change appearance or personality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)

but it will be a fascinating study tho. with this example, we can probably tell how bone marrow DNA propagate itself inside the body, but i still don't think it will outnumber the original's DNA. but serious research might be hard to do without slicing him in multiple locations to see where the copy of the donor's DNA went. there are like 37 trillion of cells in human body, unless the donor's DNA can overtake even half of those cells, i dont think any visible appearance or personality change can even happen.

sperm is the most interesting to me. if donor's DNA can affect meiosis it would be fucking crazy.

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