The Mum Made of TWO Women

The Sun [UK] ^ | November 13, 2003 | Brian Flynn

[sweetliberty]

"the twin that did not develop lives on in her sister's children?"

Pretty amazing isn't it? An unborn person whose DNA is still preserved. Makes you wonder. DNA technology is fairly new. Who knows how often it may have actually occurred. Most people would have never had reason to know, and until recently it would have been impossible to tell anyway.

[ohioWfan]

I saw some people in China (on the History channel, maybe?), who were one person, with a partial second head of a twin who had not developed.

Very strange...... as is this.

[sweetliberty]

I went to junior high with a girl that had 2 complete sets of teeth. It was weird.

[MHGinTN]

"It would be very interesting to see how her brain developed." Since she's a true chimera, both genomes are integrated into the 'self' recognition system of the immune system, and synapses are DNA dependant reflexes, and it doesn't say she suffers any facsimile dissonance, I would assume that the brain and nervous system function just as yours or mine ... well, maybe like yours, I'm showing signs of talking to yourself, er, myself.

[MHGinTN]

It might be more interesting to talk to her daughter-in-laws, to see if she's ... oh, never mind. But seriously folks, I wonder if anyone has an inkling if this may be implicated in severe schizophrenia or even Lupus or other auto-immune diseases?

[Quix]

hmmmm!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the information!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[wai-ming]

Jane was given the bombshell news that two of her three sons did not share her DNA.

That's nothing. Men have been fathering children that "don't share their DNA" for ages!

[RJCogburn]

Thanks again for the ping. Just fascinating stuff.

[Calpernia]

So...(still confused here), Jane could have given birth to children that don't share her DNA???

Why didn't her body reject the embryo? Like, when a body rejects a nonmatching organ transplant?

[MHGinTN]

The children Jane gave birth to do share the DNA of her twin (in two cases) and and hers in one case. The twin's DNA has become recognized by the immune system of Jane's body as 'self' due to the early time when the two stem cell masses combined.

Very early in your lifetime, you had not yet constructed your immune system. If the embryo that hatches from the zona pellucida happens to be too close to another embryo hatching from a separate zona pellucida, the two could merge and the blastocystic cavity would be built from stem cells having two different nuclear DNA signatures. Then, this mix of stem cells would give rise to the embryoid body and the umbilical vesicle and the immune system molecular markers would be extended to recognize two specific genome origins, not just one.

Jane's body would not reject her own tissues or her twin's tissues, and the embryonic individual (Jane's child) actually fools the immune system of the mother in order to avoid tissue rejection (this is accomplished in three ways that I won't go into unless you're really interested in being bored).

The important point to note is that Jane's twin was not an identical twin (as in having her origin from the same zygote that Jane derievd from). The twin started her lifetime as a separate 'conceptus' with a separate outer coat that protected her on her journey to the uterus. It was when the two embryos hatched from their 'zona pellucidas' that the merging happened, but the merger happened before either embryo had developed an immune system.

It is also possible that Jane's twin was conceived a day or so later than Jane so that when the twin hatched from her zona pellucida, Jane's more robust outer membrane absorbed the just hatched twin and incorporated the twin's genome into the construction of immune system and organs while cancelling the twin's stem cells tasked to build the twin's placental organ.

Jane's trophoblast stem cells (the stem cells tasked with building the placenta and sending chemical signals to bring about implantation in the mother's uterine lining) may have dissolved the primitive trophoblasts of the twin (the outer cells encapsulating the blastocystic cavity where the amniotic sac and embryoid body will grow), then incorporated into Jnae's balstocystic cavity the blastocyctic stem cells of the twin. That is in fact what I would suspect happens in 'traditional' chimeric development. ... A researcher in Chicago (professor Norbert Gleicher from Yale) actually purposely injected male embryo blastocystic stem cells into the blastocystic stem cells of a female embryo, to watch how the process of merging may occur. The chimera embryo was euthanized within a matter of days, to dissect the stem cell mass and see which portions carried the Y chromosome 'introduced' into the female embryo.

[MHGinTN]

ping-a-ling

[firewalk]

.

[MHGinTN]

Wow, my typing is going down the proverbial tubes! "... then incorporated into Jnae's balstocystic cavity the blastocyctic stem cells of the twin ..." That ought to read, "incorporated into Jane's blastocystic cavity the blastocystic cavity of the twin ..."

[maxwell]

selfping

[MHGinTN]

ping to a weird one

[Capt. Canuck]

Cool, is it from the 70's or the 90's? I have an issue zero (preview issue) of the 90's version.

[maxwell]

"Does she have two souls?"

I don't have the training to deal with this issue, but my first reaction is "yes."

Oh piffle. My first reaction is, one must separate the biological and the spiritual, if you will. So this woman has enough DNA for two. Where is it written that DNA = soul? I reckon I missed that one.

Call me pragmatic but if there are deep issues with this, they escape me. Well I'm sure a hungry lawyer could think up a few...

[AloneAgainNaturally]

Wierd seeing this thread on FR. My mother had this! She always had ehavy periods and I would say at around age 65 had a real bad attack, she thought it was her gallbadder. Turns out she had a fused twin. She had surgery done and it was exactly like your post describes. The "twin" was fused on her ovary and it had hair and teeth. She didn't want to say to much about it and frankly we all didn't want to know that much about it either since it is kind of gruesome.

But there you ahve it, this happened to my own mother about 5 years ago. The other thing I have thought of a LOT since then is that my mother is an exteemly agressive person. Well not in a bad way necessarily, what I mean by that is she is pretty bull headed. Also she is EXTREEMLY intelligent, and I mmean realy smart. Since we found out about the fused twin thing I have often wondered if she has such a strong personality because she has got extra cells in her brain? FWIW, I know form my own mother that this happens.