Status and Support

[panyasan]

Question for members who know more about medical facts then I do: If some one took a blood sample of some one and stored it for a couple of years and took a recent blood sample of that same person - would there be distinct differences? Something that tells a medical person that the blood sample that is used isn't recent.

[WarpGirl]

Well I'm not a Dr. But I have had more blood drawn than the average person... Simply put, it all depends on if the samples are stored properly. If it is then the only true indication it isn't a recent sample is the date in the files and on the Vial. Even then... blood goes bad after a time. It will eventually breakdown and be completely useless. Now it ST's time I think the technology is advanced enough that they could store samples forever and they wouldn't breakdown. So I'd say if you are storing the samples porperly in your story there wouldn't be a way to tell.

But you also have to consider if your older sample has already been tested or not. If it has its usless, and probably would be disposed of. But if for some strange reason they kept it, that could be used to tell the difference between two samples. Still, I think this option is a stretch because the tested blood is all but destroyed anyway. Hope that helps. Back to my vacation...

[Alelou]

If enough time had passed that the telomere count during a genetic analysis changed, that might indicate which was older -- which could be complete bull ca-ca, but that's how Phlox determined that T'Pau's sample in the Vulcan arc was from her infancy. Would a couple of years be enough to show a significant difference? I don't know. But I bet you could get away with either situation. Bow to the Need of Plot!

I do tend to agree with WG that proper future stasis should keep the samples in pristine condition.

[WarpGirl]

I thought that T'Pau's sample would be different because of the cord blood?????? I guess I misunderstood in that case... Oh well... I assumed panyasan meant two samples from an adult in the space of a few years.

[Alelou]

PHLOX: The Captain asked me to re-examine the DNA from the bomb to see if anyone else might have handled it.
TUCKER: You say you found an anomaly.
PHLOX: In these chromosomal fragments. Here, and here.
REED: What kind of anomaly?
PHLOX: These are telomeres. A genetic clock, if you will. Each time a cell divides, they grow shorter.
TUCKER: Sure. That's how you tell how old someone is from a cell sample.
PHLOX: Though T'Pau's current age is thirty two standard years, her DNA recovered from the bomb has an age of only a few months.
TUCKER: They used the DNA they sampled when she was registered as a baby.
PHLOX: Precisely. The evidence implicating T'Pau is false.

Thanks to Chrissie's Transcripts Site.

[WarpGirl]

OK is that real? Cause I've never seen an episode of a procederal show that could tell somebody's age from a DNA sample. And they tend to be slightly more accurate then Trek. Still I thought the chromosonal fragments they were referring too were stem cells. At least that's what I thought when I saw the dang episode.

[pdsldl]

I was under the impression from my doc that blood can only be banked 3 yrs or so and then only rarer types and there's
an 'antifreeze' glycerol solution used. According to him the cells break down eventually and are no longer usable for transfusion. They might find a better way to bank it and for longer periods of time but there should always be a limit and signs that the blood was banked. Also the likelihood that two samples of blood taken at different times, unless of course the donor had exactly the same chemicals etc... in their body, would be exactly the same. There should be environmental markers, etc... that would show up in chem panels.

And certain levels point to the approximate age of a donor. Hormones, sugar levels can indicate the age and I would think the lack of them would indicate newborn fairly easily. Also cord blood comes from a mother's cord at birth newborn so it would definitely point to age.

[Alelou]

Newborns are full of mom's hormones, but that fades pretty quickly I believe.

I doubt what Tucker said applies today. If so, it would be much easier to come up with very exact profiles of offenders. Also, judging from my paltry efforts at further research into it, the whole idea of whether telomeres predict at least longevity or age-related issues is still in dispute.

But that doesn't rule out techno babble for Star Trek.

Which reminds me, I was at my granddaughter's birthday party in South Amboy yesterday and the neighbors were having a yard sale with a wild amount of Star Trek stuff including tons of Pocket novels, though I didn't see any Enterprise ones. They were trying to help finance their last Sea Trek. Apparently they renewed their vows on the last cruise -- in costume, which definitely puts them into hardcore Trekkie category in my book. (They said they don't bother with cons, but love cruises since the stars are a lot more accessible.) My sister-in-law bought an Archer in EV suit action figure in original package, not because she had a clue what it was, but because her grandson likes "tough guys." I'm not sure why that made me want to giggle. I was a little tempted to get T'Pol since she was only two bucks, but finally decided I couldn't be bothered to have more crap around the house. But Jaime did get me a sticky note pad of Bones saying, "I'm a doctor, not an answering service!"

[Asso]

Question for members who know more about medical facts then I do: If some one took a blood sample of some one and stored it for a couple of years and took a recent blood sample of that same person - would there be distinct differences? Something that tells a medical person that the blood sample that is used isn't recent.

Something that tells a medical person that the blood sample that is used isn't recent.

Yes, and even more if you think of when the examination is supposed to occur.

[Silverbullet]

Alelou, Longevity hormones. My mother is 95, her older sister died at 93, all of her other siblings are in their late 80 and in good health. so, if I have inherited that hormone I can look forward to living in to my 90's (hopefully) as there ar anumber of things I would like to see that are comiing up.

BTW, the only exception to this was my Grandfather, on my mothers side, died at 87. He was still bartending, living with his 50ish girl friend. He got snockered one night in winter time fell into a snow bank and was not found until the following morning. He had double pneumonia and died from it. Otherwise I suppose he might still be around. One of mymothers Brothers was kiled in WWII.

There might be something to this Longevity hormone. Of course I may have just jinxed myself and will drop dead tomorrow.

SB

[Asso]

...Of course I may have just jinxed myself and will drop dead tomorrow.

Here we say: facciamo le corna (Let's make horns. ). It means: let's touch wood!

[aadarshinah]

Having had the benefit of several years of organic chemistry, I feel I can answer some of this:

If some one took a blood sample of some one and stored it for a couple of years and took a recent blood sample of that same person - would there be distinct differences?

and from the site:

PHLOX: These are telomeres. A genetic clock, if you will. Each time a cell divides, they grow shorter.
TUCKER: Sure. That's how you tell how old someone is from a cell sample.
PHLOX: Though T'Pau's current age is thirty two standard years, her DNA recovered from the bomb has an age of only a few months.
TUCKER: They used the DNA they sampled when she was registered as a baby.

The basic idea holds. The more time a cell divides, the more time the DNA gets copied. Over time, parts of the DNA - telomeres - will get shorter, sorta like how the quality of a photo goes down the more you photocopy it. Theoretically you can tell someone's age based off these telomeres, but the tech doesn't exist at this time that I've heard of. But, if you have warp drive capability, you probably have the tech to do it.

Hormones, sugar levels can indicate the age and I would think the lack of them would indicate newborn fairly easily.

If it was a blood sample, this would hold true, but maybe they didn't keep a blood sample. They could've just sequenced the genome - again, hard now, but in the future - and kept that on file, and run it against what they "found" on the bomb - which, again, theoretically - could have been replicated using one of the protein resequencer....

Something that tells a medical person that the blood sample that is used isn't recent.

There would probably also be traces of preservatives in the blood sample and/or signs of sample degredation....

I appologize if one of this makes too much sense. I'm in the middle of half-a-dozen things and my brother is, for some unknown reason, watching Knocked Up in the background....

[panyasan]

Thank you! (and every one who responded). It makes a lot of sense. I liked the idea of markers, traces of preservatives in the blood sample and/or signs of sample degredation.

[Thot]

There's another thing you could consider:

I'm no doctor, but there must be residuals in the blood, which could be used to narrow the date of the sample down. For example, the "waste"/remains of a recently fought of infection/virus, very small amounts of alcohol or something like this. The kidneys and the liver are good organs to clean the system, but they need time to get everything out.
Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised, that with the scanning techniques as advanced as Star Trek you could still determined that somebody was drunk like hell, even though it lies over a week back.

So if you find a completely deep frozen/in stasis sample the residue of consumed alcohol and of a week cold virus, you could narrow down the time frame.

But once again: I'm not a doctor.

[EntAllat]

Which reminds me, I was at my granddaughter's birthday party in South Amboy yesterday and the neighbors were having a yard sale with a wild amount of Star Trek stuff including tons of Pocket novels, though I didn't see any Enterprise ones. They were trying to help finance their last Sea Trek. Apparently they renewed their vows on the last cruise -- in costume, which definitely puts them into hardcore Trekkie category in my book. (They said they don't bother with cons, but love cruises since the stars are a lot more accessible.) My sister-in-law bought an Archer in EV suit action figure in original package, not because she had a clue what it was, but because her grandson likes "tough guys." I'm not sure why that made me want to giggle. I was a little tempted to get T'Pol since she was only two bucks, but finally decided I couldn't be bothered to have more crap around the house. But Jaime did get me a sticky note pad of Bones saying, "I'm a doctor, not an answering service!"

Enterprise was the very first show to make me cave and buy the action figures. My best friend still has original Star Wars action figures, and I knew others who'd collected other Trek figures over the years, but I never got into it. Until Enterprise.

Now I've got all of the EV suit figures, all the aliens, all the stand-alone figures and all of the Bridge set except T'Pol's station. (And maybe the helm? I'll have to check.) I even have a stuffed beagle to go with it.

A while back I stumbled across an artist who did custom figures (altering existing ones) including a fantastically detailed Mirror Universe Tucker, complete with accurate scar! I contacted him, commissioned one and even got an email from the guy saying that the figure was done and he just needed to photograph it before he'd send it in the mail and then ... nothing. That was over a year ago. No money exchanged hands so I'm not out anything but I really, really wanted it. I still haz a sad about it.