Real Life Mutations

[inamerica55585]

Apparently parasitic cells can turn people into human plant hybrids. read this article english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360/16654_mutation.html (http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360/16654_mutation.html)

I wonder how the world can use diseases like this beneficially? can we infuse tomato or potato or wheat plant cells into people so they start growing food on their body turning them into living farms? or can we infuse genes from the venus flytrap into people for you know why reasons? I think its cool, but most people don't. your thoughts?

[Titan50]

A whole planet of Poison Ivies would actually be epic

[inamerica55585]

yeah, I know. but eventually if all people were like that it would lead to humanity becoming asexual. still, is it scientifically sound to manually attempt to infuse plant genes into people or animals? we should experiment on sheep first.

Please read the article before posting.

Edit: About the article: if left unchecked, would the thorns spread to the rest of her body, and her skin turn rough and green like a cactus? would her body start storing water and in spring, would it flower? I'd like to know if the girl was really turning into a living, breathing, cactus.

[killshot]

Nothing about this article seems legit. The first few paragraphs seem to describe the origins of a super villain. All the information appears to be second hand and rumors are treated as credible sources. No sources are listed and no important names are given. Which hospital treated her? Who determined this incident to be a mutation? Not to mention the writing of this article was extremely unprofessional and downright sloppy. On top of all this the very concept of human-plant hybrids sounds utterly preposterous.

No offense, but I think you've been had.

[inamerica55585]

these are not rumors. Pravda is a credible russian newspaper. These are medically recorded conditions. human plant hybrid isn't really the word for it, more like parasitic plant cells surrounding the animal cells. If a newspaper chooses to hide its sources, then that is its desicion. Look up the name and go images search. there are pictures of the thorns! This stuff is real, Man!

[killshot]

If a newspaper chooses to hide its sources, then that is its desicion.
Then it shouldn't expect to be taken seriously.

Since this was originally printed in Russia I can excuse the atrocious grammar. However, a general lack of relevant information still keeps me from believing this story. I did a quick search and the only information on this story I was able to come up with came from a conspiracy site and a page simply titled, "Half the Children in Russia are Mutants." If I was a gambling man, I would bet that these sites didn't bother to do a whole lot of fact checking. I will admit that most of what turned up was in Russian, a language I don't speak a word of, so I don't really know if the information is there or not. Still, I find it odd that a discovery of this magnitude hasn't gotten any more publicity.

It may not be relevant to the discussion, but I also found this during my search. Perhaps this is an example of what you are referring to?

http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/30000/Watermelon-Rhino-Hybrid-30412.jpg

[inamerica55585]

Well I don't know. the article is from 05, and Putin could have seen it and chose to keep it on the down low. It's medical history, but its actually not that important. its an unknown pathology that infected her due to her weak immune system.

In any case: If we take the trueness of the article as a given, what could we draw from it? Could we take people with weak or no immune systems (like AIDS victims), put them in sterile environments, and infuse them with genes from plants? I think it deserves further study.

[darkarcher]

Eh, no.

First of all, I'm going to go with killshot on this and say that it's false. The girl may very well have this condition, but it's most likely not some sort of mutation in her anatomy. I heard a similar story about a "treeman" in Africa, whose condition stemmed from a parasitic plantform/fungus that lived beneath his skin. He was still a biologically normal human being, just with an active parasite living on him. This can be backed up also by the fact that they also attribute a standard genetic anomaly (in the form of hairy babies) to mutation into an animal, then go back and say that the person was a fully functional human being.

Now, should we just take it for granted that this is true, then the applications really wouldn't be all that extensive. If, in your example, one tried to grow fruit out of their body, it wouldn't be practical in the least. Say it was a tomato vine...even if we ignored the normal fruiting season and just said that the fruit would grow continuously (which requires pollinization also, so the flower cycle would also have to be constant), then you would still only be growing a few tomatoes once every couple of weeks. Hardly enough to be a practical source of food.

Also, you mentioned making this all possible by fusing plant genes to our own. To put it so simply is to understate the complexity of the genetic code, and also the extent to which you would have to fuse it. Even if scientists found the proper genes in both plants and animals, there would be issues causing the DNA to combine in just one cell; and even if they could infuse a cell under laboratory conditions, you have to keep in mind that the clusters that were talked about in the article would have contained thousands of cells, all of which would have to be altered.

In the end, I think it's plain out false as presented, although the symptoms may very well be real. Even if it were true, it really doesn't matter.

[inamerica55585]

you're right. fusing plant genes to human genes is almost impossible,
Narine was a 1 in 10000000000000000000 case. not only do you have to have a weak enough immune system for herbal parasitizing, it has to be under the exact right conditions. the fistula must be removed, but 2 or 3 cells left. these cells may form a new fistula, or they may do nothing.
another thing. What if we left the initial fistula alone, and the cells parasitized the whole organism? it would probably leave the person dead, but I think this matter is worth study.
Let's do this: find a person with AIDS. he/she's going to die anyway, he/she may as well devote her time to science. second, put this person in a completely sterile chamber, to make sure nothing goes wrong. Third, inject this person with cells from a dog. as far as I can guess, there are two possible things that can happen: 1, his/her body will reject the cells, but since they have no immune system, they will die. or 2, the person will begin to slowly show some characteristics of a dog. 1 is much more likely, but in the name of science, the experiment must be performed. It's mad science, genetic experimenting, and generally defies the hippocratic oath, but if the chance for amazing things to happen is there, we should seize it, regardless of the risks. I know, I know, I'm mad, but I want to know! <img src='/images/emoticons/smiley2.png'> <img src='/images/emoticons/smiley2.png'> <img src='/images/emoticons/smiley2.png'>

[darkarcher]

2, the person will begin to slowly show some characteristics of a dog.
Please explain how this would work from a genetic perspective, because so far between you and the article I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that it's a mutation of the person themselves rather than a parasitic formation.

[WillPhanto1]

How would growing food on yourself feed you? Wouldn't the fruit require energy and materials from you to grow, meaning you would have to eat not only to sustain yourself, but the fruit growing on you. It would be a terribly inefficient food source.

Also, torturing someone just to see if we could turn them into plant? That's like, Doc from Hellsing mad science.

[Tatterdemalion]

Keep in mind, being pricked by a cactus can't make you turn into a cactus. I mean, it's possible for parts of cacti to continue to live after they have been detatched from the body, so if you were to get a large enough part of a cactus lodged under your skin, it may, by very, very longshot odds, be possible for that part to continue to grow, although it's very unlikely, considering that it wouldn't be likely to get a large enough piece of cactus lodged under your skin without being able to get it out (you'd have to get have someone whack you violently in the arm with a cactus, and even then it's unlikely). Also, conditions in your wrist aren't exactly optimal for growing cactus, and it's more than likely that the plant would die anyway.

Also, for the record, cactus needles alone don't, to my knowledge, have the ability to reproduce on their own, in that they don't contain the proper regenerative material.

Also, even if that were possible, a plant can't just start growing inside of a human body, or anywhere, just because of a few cells. Plants reproduce sexually, they don't just spring up out of a couple of cells. That is, if you take a few cactus cells and put them in a petri dish, they're not going to grow into a cactus. Cacti aren't single celled organisms, it's not as though there's one "cactus" cell that can just divide and multiply. So if plants can't reproduce asexually outseide of the human body, then why would they be able to do so inside? You talk about plant cells "parasitizing" the human cells, but that makes no sense, as there's nothing to be parasitized...

Also, there's no reason that a plant cell existing inside a human body could by any stretch of biology cause the human body to somehow start producing hybrid cells...animal cells and plant cells are so incredibly different that for any aspect of them at all to combine, let alone start making hybrid DNA, is unfathomable, at least under these circumstances.

So yeah, your silly tabloid article has virtually no foundation in biology whatsoever (and no, Pravda, the periodical published on the wibsite you linked to, is not currently a credible Russian newspaper. There was at one point a major Russian newspaper called Pravda, however this is not it). If you want more crazy stories supported by Pravda, let's go to the good people at snopes.com

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=pravda&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0

Look at all of the articles on that search after the first one, maybe it'll shed some light on the situation.

Also, did you know gullible isn't in the Oxford English Dictionary?

But thinking about it, maybe this is what Bush meant a few years back when he was talking about "animal-human hybrids"?

Also, just a quick quote from the articleBut still she kept on looking after her pot plants.
See, that's the problem right there! She's just stoned, that's all...