YOU may have left a bigger impression on your mother than you thought. Many women carry around their offspring’s DNA for the rest of their lives, say Italian researchers. Most of the time it goes unnoticed, but occasionally this foreign DNA can trigger life-threatening diseases.
Cells from a fetus are already known to persist in the mother’s body for decades after the child is born (New Scientist, 24 February 2001, p 8). The cells can lodge in lymph nodes, liver, spleen or muscle, and may eventually form part of the mother’s tissue.
But now a team led by Pietro…
