this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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That's what Cadmus wants you to think.

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 points 38 minutes ago

This reminds me of the law and order episode with twins where one was a rapist...

https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Double_Strands

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

To add that the general understanding of how DNA works and is used can be scary, just like other measurements. I bet there's still a lot of people that believe fingerprint analysis is some kind of rock solid science based evidence, but my understanding is that it's very much prone to errors and interpretation.

I don't mean to say that DNA analysis suffers the same flaws, just trying to illustrate with an example.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 11 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I hate the generalized concept of "AI", but I love the concept of "Machine Learning"

If you think LLMs are good at anything, I am almost 100% certain to disagree with you about pretty much everything, to help you understand this distinction.

Anyhow, some computer scientists found that a machine learning algorithm could predict beyond a null hypothesis that A fingerprint belonged to a person given a different fingerprint (different finger but still same person)

"Criminology" expers were just like "no, it's settled science"

This is the state of discourse.

  1. why do I even feel the compulsion to preface by saying my bit about ai and llms?

  2. how tf is "settled science" even a concept in a science

[–] prime_number_314159@lemmy.world 4 points 34 minutes ago

I get a similar vibe from psychology. There's a number of "experts" that are out in the field, doing the hard work day after day, putting in those hours... And hopelessly blinded by their own confirmation bias and survivorship bias. Clinical therapists in surveys prove very willing to overlook strong research in support of certain methods because they believe they see results in their clinical work that can't be reproduced in a lab.

Then each field also has a research wing, slowly carving a path towards useful ideas, expending tremendous effort for each new finding, method, and result (even negative results!).

[–] sudochown@programming.dev 3 points 2 hours ago

Same with bite mark analysis, polygraph, and bullet/gun rifling matching. CSI, Law and Order, etc. all have convinced people these things are just the pinnacle of evidence.

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It's like in Naruto when Itachi gave his eyes to Sasuke. Bro could probably unlock balls mangekyou.

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 40 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

There was a woman who went to prison for this, her chimera baby's dna contradicted her story, I think to get public assistance of some kind, and the dna test convinced the state assholes she was lying and they sent her to prison, I think some researchers exonerated her eventually.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 16 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Are you thinking of Lydia Fairchild? In her case she wasn't sent to prison. However, her two children were taken from her and placed in foster care. Lawyers had refused to represent her at first, due to the belief that DNA evidence is too strong to fight. On the plus side, she became pregnant again. So a court officer was present during her third child's birth.

Despite being at the birth and witnessing blood draws from both mother and child, the court still claimed she was being untruthful somehow. Thankfully, that birth and its evidence were peculiar enough to attract a lawyer to finally represent her. Only after that did the investigation into potential chimerism arise.

More info here - https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002

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[–] sanbdra@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

Biology really said “plot twist” and rewrote the whole family tree. This is wild and fascinating at the same time.

[–] Sunshine@piefed.ca 15 points 4 hours ago

Part 3 DIO be like.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 110 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I think there was a similar case, but about the mother. The courts took her baby and she was on trial for kidnapping.

Eventually a geneticists saw it on the news and suggested she got tested again using DNA samples from other parts of her body and they found out she also was a chimera.

Some racism was involved as she was working class and black, so the courts were just looking for a reason to take her baby and throw her ass in jail..

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

You'd think they'd change DNA test methodologies so this sort of thing doesn't happen again

It's rare enough for them not to give a fuck. especially since it'll only hurt poor people who cant afford a genetic consultant

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 56 points 6 hours ago

Some racism was involved

Not surprised after reading the first paragraph

[–] dkppunk@piefed.social 18 points 6 hours ago

I remember that one, it was the first time I heard of this scenario. It really sucks for folks involved, but it is kind of interesting too.

[–] snoons@lemmy.ca 48 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

The brothers ghost, after cucking him for revenge:

[–] applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 52 minutes ago (1 children)

but why would you assume he's one brother or the other? he's both brothers simultaneously, and neither, like Tuvix.

[–] 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 5 points 4 hours ago

Ultimate cuck

[–] iThinkDifferentThanU@lemmy.world 90 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Can't even trust a brother you ate in utero

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 26 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] MrShankles@reddthat.com 2 points 1 hour ago

Nah, his sperm was unfaithful

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 38 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Another fun-ish, kinda fucked up, weird story... There's a woman, Henrietta Lacks, who had a biopsy for her cervical cancer in January of 1951 before passing in October of that year. These cells were found to be incredibly resilient and quick to replicate. Most cells only lasted a few days before dying, but hers seemed to be functionally immortal under controlled lab conditions.

So, unbeknownst to her as consent wasnt required for such things at the time, her cancer cells were cultured and grown into large samples to be used in research. Those samples were split off and passed off to other labs. They've since spread around the entire world for a ton of research and commercial purposes.

They were used in the development of the polio vaccine, for example, as well as having been used in research on cancer (obviously), AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic materials, gene mapping, etc. They are used to test safety of cosmetics as well. Approximately 11,000 patents involve these specific cancer cells.

In the 1970s, there was an incident where these cells contaminated other cell cultures, so the researchers needed DNA samples from the Henrietta's family to differentiate her cells from the others. This is the first time anyone in her family learned that her cells had been used in research at all, let alone that her cells were being cloned and used in research and commercial product development across the entire world. It became a legal issue after this, and after a couple decades of litigation, it made it to the Supreme Court of California where they ruled that "discarded biological materials" is no longer ones property and could be commercialized freely. They continue to occasionally fight against aspects of her cells' usage, and they're are health privacy concerns for her family as well, but results have been mixed for them.

Henrietta the person died in 1951 at age 31, but her immortal cancer cells which still contain her full DNA sequence continue to live to this day, 75 years later. One source claims that as much as 50 million metric tons of tissue has been generated from these cells.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

HeLa is extremely interesting, but still requires humans to cultivate her cells.

Canine transmissible venereal tumor however, is an immortal, contagious dog tumor from a dog thousands of years ago that evolved into its own lifeform - a sexually transmitted parasitic cancer - that has continued to this day to spread from host to host. Yet, genetically, it is still "dog".

Anyway, this is my answer when the job interviewer asks me about long-term goals.

I worked with HeLa cells as a molecular biology student. The ethics weren't a great look, and I'm happy that today there has to be informed consent for stuff like that.

Without having an immortalized cell line like this genetics would have taken even longer to get going tho, and she's actually one of the few people whose genes will be preserved for near eternity. Creepy, but it's closer to actual immortality than any of us will ever be.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 13 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

In the 1970s, there was an incident where these cells contaminated other cell cultures, so the researchers needed DNA samples from the Henrietta's family to differentiate her cells from the others.

I don't understand. First, what was the point? I doubt there was a way to split the sample attacked by a cancer cells, they probably weren't going to recalibrate the transporter and untuvix them.

Second, weren't there thousands of the copies of the sample? Why wouldn't they compare it to one of them, instead of bothering the family?

That confused me as well. The stuff I read didn't elaborate on how that would help.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 116 points 8 hours ago (5 children)

Apparently this is more common with cats. If you see a cat with two different coat patterns, either divided down the middle or along the neck (as if they only had spare parts left at the cat factory), they may also be a chimera.

[–] I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 93 points 7 hours ago (3 children)
[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 53 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Venus!!! I love Venus. She long predates AI for the curious. She's an ig celeb.

I saw this one too the other day on the other site, I think.

[–] I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 33 points 6 hours ago

Half scraggle muffin, half had enough of your shit.

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[–] NoForwadSlashS@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

So I guess this means he ate every part of his brother except for the balls. Meaning he has 4 testicles knocking about in his scrotum, like a bag of shallots.

Nah, this post's phrasing is misleading. Chimerism comes from a fusion of two separate embryos, not from two fully-formed babies merging together. A chimera is less one dominant embryo that "absorbs a twin," and more a regular person that just happens to be made up of two separate sets of genetic material. Imagine having two different puzzles with pieces that are cut in an identical pattern. You could use pieces from either puzzle to fit into each other. If you randomly draw pieces from either set and merge them into one picture, you end up with a puzzle that's a bit of both, but still only one. That's how it works with chimeras - the DNA from two individuals are mixed and matched to create a patchwork of both in one body. A key difference is, a puzzle would have leftover pieces - but the body would not.

It's often not apparent in any way. However, if the two sets of DNA call for different skin colors or something, a chimera might show both colors in different areas.

In the post's case, the cells that went on to make the man's testicles were made with different DNA than whatever part the first sample was taken from. There may be more parts of his body that use that same DNA, but unless they test a sample from every part of him, we'll never know exactly.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 7 hours ago (7 children)

I'm a data analyst at a medical nonprofit, primarily doing analyses on germline variants for rare forms of cancer. I'm new to this kind of work, but had a decent educational background in biology.

Something I've learned is that genetics are complicated as hell. A single gene can produce multiple different proteins, and proteins change over time due to somatic variation. Only 1% of the genome are protein coding, called exomes. Exomes can be affected by variations to start and stop codons, non coding regions, and untranslated regions. There are entire fields dedicated to studying genome-wide, exomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, phenomics, and probably several others that I don't know about. The amount of data involved with these fields is in the tebibytes region. Have you ever seen a "small" 3GiB csv? I have. The filtered and cleaned data frames created by genetics are over 100 columns wide and have nearly 5 million entries.

There are companies creating artificial life by generating custom chromosomes. There's a whole field of computer science dedicated to biological computing, using DNA as a storage medium. There are companies dedicated to simply classifying genes.

DNA is cool as hell.

[–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting, could you enlighten what types if data is in those 100 columns? I’m aware of ATGC and thought it would be just one column, but maybe the rest are some that indicate intensity or activity. Or what sequence they are part of.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Well it varies depending on what the file is meant for. Usually there's columns like chromosome, variant position, reference nucleotide, observed nucleotide, type of variation, codon sequence, gene name, etc.

There's also columns that result from various analyses. In the file I've been working on lately, there are columns such as variant impact, level of confidence, pathogenicity, clinical significance, etc.

[–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 hours ago

Sweet, thanks for the reply. I didn’t expect to fully understand what they would contain but I got the idea.

There’s a Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda who you might like, he has visualised DNA and all sorts of data. I like his data.gram exhibition’s style the most esthetically amusing and he has published some albums too.

https://www.taronasugallery.com/en/exhibitions/ryoji-ikeda%E3%80%8Cdata-gram%E3%80%8D/

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