When a person gets a blood transfusion, does the DNA in the donor blood affect the recipient?
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It depends on what part of the blood they receive. The only component of blood that contains DNA is the white blood cells. If you’re only getting red blood cells, platelets, or plasma, they won’t add DNA from the donor.
Red blood cells contain no DNA.
White blood cells do.
A blood transfusion will therefore contain some DNA from the donor.
Using extremely sensitive tests that replicate specific DNA we can sometimes detect the presence of donor DNA up to a year and a half after a donation, but keep in mind this is using extremely sensitive testing. The recipient DNA would be the overwhelming majority.
Eventually however, these DNA levels become undetectable.
Because of how blood cells are made (for the purposes of an ELI5) they don’t replicate in the host, and so eventually, the donor blood goes away.
So to answer your question, donor DNA doesn’t actually affect the recipient in any meaningful way.
It’s there if you get a whole blood transfusion (or some specific non-RBC/platelet cellular product). Does it affect much of anything? Not really. It’s contained in those cells as usual. Some free DNA may act through damage-associated signaling pathways (because DNA *should* be inside cells and if not there’s probably some that died violently) but that’s really no big deal.
Now, if that DNA happens to encode a bunch of foreign antigens that those cells express, it’s another story… but blood banks handle that matching.
Basically no. DNA is inside your cells, specifically the white blood cells in blood. Your body doesn’t open up cells to check the insides, it checks the outside surface of cells. The A, B, O, positive, negative, etc describes protiens on the surface of the cells. If the code on outside the donated blood is close enough to yours, your body leaves it alone.
Blood doesn’t just come in types A, B, AB, and O. In fact, let’s get all the way into the
weeds: Scientists have discovered over 300 proteins that contribute to blood type. The AB+ on your blood donor card? Yeah, that’s a massive oversimplification.
So blood is very specific to an individual.
source: [https://www.wired.com/2016/03/beyond-blood-type-genomics-can-show-youre-really-made/](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/beyond-blood-type-genomics-can-show-youre-really-made/)
Oh and did anyone mention the increased risk of liver cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma among blood transfusion recipients?
source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5391695/
When you donate blood, your blood gets separated into components: red blood cells, platelets, plasma, and cryoprecipitate. This is done by a centrifuge, which you can google. Doctors can order transfusions of each of these components separately depending on a patients’ specific needs. Most commonly, red blood cells are what’s needed. They don’t contain DNA (well, technically they might contain a tiny trace that withstood separation, but it’s basically inconsequential).
We don’t transfuse white blood cells. Those are the only ones that contain DNA. They mostly get siphoned off and used for research and stuff, or tossed out.
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