The cells we share
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What fascinating discovery did Bird Pinkerton share with her mother?
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Okay, so I'm recording. Do you want to just first start by, can you say your name and how you know me?
My name is Anne Bird Platt, and I am Bird Pinkerton's mother.
That's my mom. And I called my mom after I found out this fascinating thing. Basically that some cells from my body are probably hanging out inside of her body and have likely been there for three decades, like ever since she carried me in her womb. And as I told her, those cells, cells that are genetically me, it seems like some of them might have stuck around in your body and become a part of you. you. And I am curious what you make of that. You can't have the back.
You want to use a quote, use that quote.
Great. Thank you for telling me how to do my job. So my plan here was to explain to my mom very briefly sort of what those cells could be doing inside her and what similar cells are doing to parents all over. And that plan went without a hitch. Can you, I mean, now, since you're helping me out, can you ask me what are they doing inside my body? What are these cells doing inside my body? Can I ask it as a statement?
What do you mean, can you ask it as a statement? I hope these cells... are behaving themselves. You know, they're playing nicely with myself.
Well, so here's the fun twist. Researchers don't know. It seems like you know, maybe something like a parent-child relationship. Some of the things that these cells might be doing might be good. Some of them might be somewhat less good. Some of them might be totally neutral. And researchers just don't No. Define less good. All right. Well, let's get into it. Do you want me to tell you a little bit about like, OK, so I'm going to I wasn't actually I was just going to walk you through that intro, but I just tell you the whole episode and see what happens. Okay. Do you have something? No. Yeah, you definitely, something is happening. It's Chris. Can you just put your phone on silent?
Yes, I can put my phone on silent. Thank you. It's on silent.
It's Unexplainable. I'm Bird Pinkerton. And we originally aired this episode a few years ago when we did a series on pregnancy and parenting. But we recently had a bunch of people on the team become parents. So I have been thinking about pregnancy a lot. And especially about the idea that even though pregnancy is one of the most common experiences on Earth, right? This thing that... we all participate in in order to be alive, pregnancy is still very mysterious. It's mysterious in ways that are amazing and awe-inspiring, obviously, but also in ways that can hurt parents or at least confuse them. And so the story that I was telling my mom is kind of this perfect example of a lot of the things I learned about pregnancy over the course of my reporting.
Like, it has got a wonder element, but it also has an element of just the frustrating reality that we are still very, very far from satisfying answers.
All right, so let's just start with the basics here. This whole idea of my giving you my cells, right, it's actually a subset of something called chimerism, which you know what a chimera is, right? Yes, I do. You want to describe that for me?
Well, it's like a replication of the real thing.
Not exactly. So a chimera is like a, it's the mythical creature from like Greek myth. So you have like, it has like a lion head and like a snake tail and like a goat body. Okay. Like a griffin's a chimera, a sphinx, a manticore.
It's the composite, right? Okay.
Right. Let the record show that my mother did know what a chimera was and was unfairly put on the spot.
Doesn't sound like your mother knew what a chimera was.
So that is a chimera in myth. But to understand a chimera in biology and what it has to do with pregnancy, I reached out to Amy Boddy, who is a biologist at UC Santa Barbara.
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