May 15, 2009

Blood Is Thicker Than Water - DNA Series Part 1

Growing up, my brother and I (like many other siblings I expect) used to get into quite a few skirmishes which, at the time, could sometimes seem quite big (I would go upstairs and slam my bedroom door repeatedly and vow never to speak to him again).

Well, on such occasions, my dad would often talk to both my brother and me, saying that we needed to care for each other for, when he and mom were gone, we would be all we got. And that what kept us linked was stronger than anything else, stronger than what we’d have for our respective spouses.

Yes, my brother and I have mended, about a million times by now. But I wonder whether, apart from growing up with each other, perhaps my father’s words did have a deeper meaning than at first believed, one that is etched into our very own genetic code. . .

We’ve all heard those stories of identical twins living separately who ended up having very similar lives in the end (sometimes even having the same sorts of things happen to them in the same year and ending up with wives with the same first name!). Could this be a “subtle” sign of how our blood really does link people of the same family together?

Here’s an experiment recounted in The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden that has interesting possibilities, if true:


“In a 1993 study reported in the journal Advances, the Army performed experiments to determine precisely whether the emotion/DNA connection continues following a separate, and if so, at what distances? The researchers started by collecting a swab of tissue and DNA from the inside of a volunteer’s mouth. This sample was isolated and taken to another room in the same building. . . . In a specially designed chamber, the DNA was measured electrically to see if it responded to the emotions of the person it came from, the donor who was in another room several hundred feet away.
In this room, the subject was shown a series of video images. . . . While he was doing so, in another room his DNA was measured for its response.
When the donor experienced emotional “peaks” and “dips,” his cells and DNA showed a powerful electrical response at the same instant in time. Although distances measured in hundreds of feet separated the donor and the samples, the DNA acted as if it was still physically connected to his body.”

Isn’t that insane? I have to say that, ever since I’ve read this, I’ve felt really guilty about all the hair and dry cells I’ve left all over the place since being born. I mean, what if I’ve made someone really upset one day ‘cause I was pissed off about something and he/she ended up stepping on my lonely strand of hair at the same time and ended up getting all pissed off too?

Anyways, the author goes on to wonder whether this effect could explain why some people have been said to change personalities after an organ transplant that can be traced all the way to the donor. So wouldn’t it be the same for identical twins and, to some extent, siblings who share the same parents and, thereby, the same “blood?”

--Alessa


PS: Here's an awesome picture of a nebula that looks like a DNA strand.
You can find the National Geographic article about this nebula here.

7 comments:

  1. That is pretty wicked cool. Now they need to come up with a machine that teaches our significant others to learn to read our emotions based off of saliva samples... So that they will know if we are PMS-ing, sad, or irritable from a far (and perhaps safer) distance.

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  2. Wouldn't it be awesome? Then they could carry it in a special vial around their neck that changes colors depending on our moods and be able to respond appropriately :D

    What a fun idea, Thecamsters!

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  3. And to think scientists believe 95% of DNA's junk material that doesn't do anything.

    Still though, I wonder why our cells still respond to us when they're off our body?

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  4. You know, Anonymous, I wonder too. If this is true, then it would mean that there's some kind of link between our central power system (the body) and our satellites (the cells that we constantly lose). What kind of link is it (is it because, no matter what, we're all linked to everything at all times anyway? Or does it have particularities like radio antennas? Something else?), how far can it go (tests undertaken by some scientists show that the transmission can happen all across the country and the response is still instantaneous), and how long does it last (I mean, seriously, do all our cells react like that all the time, even after they've decayed? -- Oh, you think that's why we see ghosts/feel other people's presence?).

    All questions that remain to be answered, for sure, but they open the door to interesting possibilities :)

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  5. That is very interesting indeed. It reminds me of this one physics experiment I thought was really cool (terribly sorry but I can't find a reference to it online. If I ever do I'll post it as a comment).

    Basically, there was this one particle that traveled at the speed of light and whenever researchers measured it's location, the spin would change. And so they devised an experiment whereby they would use a prism like device and split the particle so that they would have two identical particles traveling away from each other, each with the same spin. The idea being that they could measure the location of one, and hence know both the spin and location of the other.

    Sounds simple enough, right? But then the weirdness started!

    They discovered that even though these two particles were traveling away from each other at the speed of light, if they measured one of the particles, the other would invariably be altered instantaneously.

    It's as if the Heisenberg uncertainty police stepped in and were like, "Nuh-uh, you can't know both the position and velocity at the same time!"

    The relation between the experiment I just described and your blog post is that there does exist some connection between particles that is faster than the speed of light and completely unexplainable with modern physics. And it seems that a similar connection could also exist between whole atoms and hence more complicated DNA molecular chains.

    Wish I could find that article describing the experiment...hehe

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  6. blue82, you know, I've read and heard (and seen programs) describing a similar experiment (though I don't think it involved prisms of any kind, then again, I could be totally wrong). But they were making this electron go through a hole and then see where it hit. Which was basically the spot right behind it.

    Then the reiterated the experiment, except that instead of going through one hole, the electron would have to "pick" between one hole above or another below it. Well, guess what? Turns out that the electron somehow split and went through both holes at the same time and ended up hitting the same spot it would have if there'd only been one hole AND they realized that, by thinking which hole they thought the electron was going to go through, it invariably went through that particular hole (thereby responding to our very thoughts).

    All in all, it's all quite amazing, isn't it?

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  7. Most of the women I've kissed have said I have an electric personality...hmmm!

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