About: I am a digital artist and computer geek with interests in Linux, open source design programs, and saving the world. You will find me blogging here about art, life, technology, and other mildly amusing things. Fascinating: Cancer cells that outlive their original hosts.
Tonight I read an article off reddit by alluringly titled: Common Benign Dog Tumor May Actually Be Ancient, Immortal Dog Turned into Virus. After reading the article completely, I am stunned… what a concept, cancer cells mutating and propagating into a communicable disease of their own! The real clincher is that the article suggests that this “transmissible tumor” has distinctly different DNA from its host body, which is proposed to have originated from a single dog or wolf several centuries ago! Do check out this article, because it is truly fascinating. This is a concept in biology I had neither heard nor concieved of before.
However, possibly even more interesting was Wikipedia’s page (linked in the article) on HeLa cells. According to Wikipedia, this is an “immortal cell line (it does not age) used in medical research and a proposed new single cell species [...] derived from cervical cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks, who died from her cancer in 1951.”
HeLa are considered “immortal”: they do not die of old age and can divide an unlimited number of times as long as basic cell survival conditions are met (i.e. being maintained and sustained in a suitable environment). There are many strains of HeLa cells as they continue to evolve by being grown in cell cultures, but all HeLa cells are derived from the same tumour cells removed from Lacks. It has been estimated that the total mass of HeLa cells today far exceeds that of the rest of Henrietta Lacks’ body.
I find simply the ideas and implications of such a biological occurrance really startling. How would you like to be survived by the cancer cells that killed you? This is really food for thought, and while I don’t have much opinion about it at the moment, I’m sure many people could have a field day with all the idealogical, moral, and political ideas involved. Perhaps they already have. Yet, for now, I will simply share something new I learned about today. 
RSS 2.0
HeLla awesome.
Comment by pandas — August 11, 2006 @ 1:37 pm
I first read about HeLa cells in a Readers Digest about 30 years ago.
Now I’m a subscriber of SciAm, and I don’t read there a word about HeLa cells.
But they do write about contagious canine genital cancer, whose DNA is different from the host DNA.
Very good your site.
Comment by Ecelso Zanato — March 31, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
This is so thrilling for me. I am the one who sat beside you on the flight from Portland to Salt Lake City on August 8. I live in Seaside. We talked throughout the flight. I was on my way to my 50th Class Reunion and you to DC and NY. Hope you had a wonderful trip. I certainly did. My boyfriend of 50+ years ago and I met in Albuquerque before and after the reunion. He is the doctor who recently created the cervical cancer vaccine (HPV) and works at the Brown Cancer Center in Louisville, KY. To go onto your site for the first time and then find the HeLa article was amazing. Just another unexplainable situation for me. I’ve enjoyed reading your poetry. I dabble, but, of course, nothing like yours. Congratulations and thanks for being such a wonderful “flight” partner. If you’re ever in Seaside, my door is always open. I’d be happy to show you and your family around…You’ve probably already visited our “small” hospitable city. Thanks so much. CJC
Comment by Coral Jan Cook — August 18, 2007 @ 5:35 pm