Jeckyl and Hyde: Each Clone Has a Different Personality, Why?
Until now biologists and even theologians have believed that the DNA was the same in all cells. A clone of my fibroblasts could be used to grow me … a twin!
The idea is central to two major tenets.
In biology we now believe in “stem cells” .. that is the ability to recreate each person’s tissues using a sample of their DNA. personally, I wonder clones of Kim Jung Il and Steve Jobs may not be growing in some covert lab in North Korea.
In religion, especially America’s radicalized religion, we are told that “life” begins at conception because the sperm and the egg c0mbine to make a unique individual defined by the combination of their DNA. If, however, every cell has different DNA. then logic requires that fundamentalists protect ALL cells, not just fertile eggs!
This frightening prospect arises because Fred H. Gage and Alysson R. Muotri in the new issue of Scientific American claim that diversity in brain wiring arises from both variations in the genes we inherit from our parents as well as from genetic rearrangements that occur in neurons after the brain forms! They use this observation to explain what I call “Jeckyl and Hyde,” genetically inbred mice , handled in exactly the same way in the laboratory, display differences! Unless we speculate that there are subtle environmental differences even within the lab environment, something else has to be going on.