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> Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s It absolutely does. That's how cancer occurs btw. The term is "somatic mutations".
by 331c8c71 3y ago
> Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s
It absolutely does. That's how cancer occurs btw. The term is "somatic mutations".
- 331c8c71 3y agoActually not only cancer. That's also required for adaptive immunity. A human immune system needs roughly 100 million different antibodies to potentially bind every pathogen. And there are only ~30K genes. What happens is that in B cells the DNA that encodes antibodies' binding regions actually mutate upon B cell maturation. Similar for T cells. The term is "V(D)J recombination".
- AlbertCory 3y agoI'll confess my ignorance here, but would your saliva cells also show it (assuming it's not a mouth or throat cancer)? And it is is, wouldn't you have noticed something before your regular "checkup" from 23andme?
- 331c8c71 3y agoGood question. I think this should answer your questions https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12920-020-0664-7 https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ Speaking of detecting cancer indirectly, it is actually the fact that sometimes you can detect tumors (early) because their DNA or RNA products reach the blood or other bodily fluids (cfDNA/cfRNA for "circulating free"). It is a big and a recent thing - for many cancer types e.g. lung there was basically no easy way to test. Biopsies are very invasive obviously....
- AlbertCory 3y ago23andme wasn't offering blood testing every year, though, right? Nor claiming to detect new mutations in subsequent saliva tests, AFAIK.