The Phantom has used the hyperbole that 90% of what he was taught in medical school turned out to be wrong, but he is beginning to wonder about whether this will turn out to be the exaggeration he thought it to be.
Today's New York Times has an article about new findings showing that not all our cells contain, as we were all once taught, the same genes (and their mutations) we were born with. In fact, it turns out, cells from other sources wind up in the DNA of some specific cells
Now, it turns out women who have given birth to male offspring have cells with Y chromosome (presumably from their male offspring) in their brain cells; women have Y chromosomes in their breast cells.
Apparently, cells introduced into an organism can migrate, implant like seeds blown in the wind and take up residence in host cells, mixing genes and propagating.
This poses problems for forensic matching of genes from a smear from the inside of a person's cheek to the sperm in a victim's vagina--if you get the wrong cells from the perpetrator he can look innocent.
The bedrock notion, that genes are immutable hallmarks of the individual is now rocked. If 90% of all genes in our body belong to the bacteria and viruses which coexist there with us, and the 10% we thought made us discrete individuals is changed by cross pollination, then what has happened to our basic concepts of genetic uniqueness?
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