Discussion on:

Baby's genome found in mom's blood

This is exciting news. I can't wait for prices to drop on having my genome sequenced.

How long does the baby's genome stay in the mother's blood? Is it only until delivery or shortly afterwards, or is it permanent? Does a mother carry around her baby's genome for the rest of her life? That could have some interesting implications.

This has super interesting implications. I wonder if this will ultimately lead to a selective evolution where most people choose to abort fetuses that are carry a gene for a certain type of disease.

Back in the 70's when I was doing the mommy thing I had a doctor tell me that y chromones from the male babies would show up in my blood for years after I had them. Presumably x chromones would too but be unnoticed as I had plenty of my own xx's running around.

I always wondered how that played out with further developments in dna testing after the ability to rapidly sequence dna came out. Now I know, broken chains in bits and pieces do not resemble the intact parental gene sequence.

Does that answer the question rmberkiowitz?

What would the results show if the mother had recently ( or previously) been transfused?

Thanks, IMWeira, It partly answers my question. We've known for a while that our children are somewhat shaped by the genes they inherit from us. I'm not sure what the difference is between "genome" and "chromosone." But what if, by having children, a woman is also somehow, even a little bit, shaped by each child?

Just think! A complete generation of blonde, blue eyed, atheletic children with a marked propensity to raising their right arms in a salute to their benificent leader...