If I would ever find the time, I would write a book on the “self”. Inspired by the Eccles/Popper book that I bought as a student, I always wondered how different the self is being defined in sociology, psychology/psychiatry, philosophy and theology.
As my current focus is more on genetics and immunology, I found a paper by Francisco Borrego on the “missing self” quite interesting as it highlights the genetic self is determined mainly by MHC class I molecules, where only NK cells transfected with H-2Dd were able to confer resistance for being self-attacked. It would be nice if other disciplines could also provide such simple answers, yea, yea.

Addendum

I have another suggestion: Zfp608 protects mouse mothers against immune-mediated attack by fetal cells.

Is there also a “digiself“?

Our identity has, for many years, existed quite independent of our physical incarnation in government, financial and other institutional databases. We are not real to the bank or other authorities unless we can produce something that links our physical self to our “real identity” in their database. We have many versions of this digital identity – or digiSelf, as I like to call it – spread among many databases, each with its unique characteristics, and inferred behaviours. Each one is more real to the institution – and ironically, to the people in that institution – than our physical self, what we consider to be our real self.