Stripes and Mosaics

What an adorable pinafore dress I received in the mail this morning! Simple and stripey, all it needed to be dressed up (in my opinion) was this vintage Mickey Mouse club badge and a simple cropped top. And I'm totally embracing the last day of "non-winter" by sitting in the sunshine while studying and (sneakily) blogging. I am pretty jealous of all of you in the Northern Hemisphere who are going to be starting summer tomorrow :'( Just to let you know, my posts are going to become a little bit less frequent over the next month as I head into my final university exams for the semester, but I'll endeavour to keep posting at least 2 or 3 times a week! Having something else to focus on other than studying keeps me somewhat sane, so I'm not going to do what I did last year and abandon you guys while my exams are going. It was good for my grades, but not so much for my sanity. striped pinafore dress - c/o She Likes | socks - c/o Oasap | shoes - Bodyline | shirt - c/o Sheinside | badge - gift from my friend (thrifted) Continuing on this little genetics theme I've got going on... I'm going to talk about something quite related to genetic chimerism, which is known as mosaicism. In chimeras (which I talked about last week), the organism ends up with two different sets of DNA within their body because of the fusion of two zygotes (the stage before becoming an embryo) in the womb. This means that a chimera's non-identical twin is alive inside them. Pretty sci-fi stuff, right?  Well, organisms with mosaicism came from a single zygote (meaning they didn't absorb their own twin), but still have more than one set of DNA within the cells in their bodies. How does this happen? Similar to chimeras, the process begins very early in development while the baby is still in the womb. When dividing (as cells do very rapidly at the beginning of development), some cells get confused and don't replicate their DNA correctly. A mutation occurs in one of the cells which goes unnoticed, and continues to happily divide. Cells with different sets of DNA continue to grow within the baby, and if the mutation isn't really serious, the baby will be born with a mutant trait which is seen in some cells, but not others. Mosaicism can affect any type of cell, including skin cells (see above). Do you have a tortiseshell cat? This is a really great (and easy to see) example of mosaicism! I hope you're all having a great last day of autumn or spring, depending on where you are! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr