I know I just posted but how come a person can have different DNA in their womb than their mouth yet get a transplant and their body whacks out?? (Not talking abt a baby lol I think it’s called chimeraism??)
In: Biology
Your body recognizes early in its development what is itself and what is not itself. So if you are a chimera person that was formed from two fraternal twins that joined very early in embryonic development, when only a few cells, your body’s immune system recognizes all of your cells as being friendly and won’t attack them, even though you have 2 different sets of DNA. But when you get an organ transplant, you’re older and your immune system has already recognized what is yourself and what is not yourself. So it’s too late to train the body to recognize the foreign organ as yourself and friendly. So your body will see the organ as foreign.
A side note: organ transplant experts have been trying to change this. They have some techniques in development now. So for example, they might given a recipient some bone marrow from the donor. Bone marrow makes white blood cells, which are part of your immune system. the idea is that now your immune system will be partly the donor’s immune system, so will be less likely to attack the donated organ since it recognizes the organ’s DNA as itself. And a very young baby is going to be less likely to reject an organ because its immune system is still developing and is not necessarily going to react as negatively to something foreign.
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