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Human Chimeras / Chimaeras

Man Failed A Paternity Test Due To His Vanished Twin’s DNA

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/failed-paternity-test-vanished-twin

more at link above

"How can a man who was never born father a son? When the ghost of his genes lives on in the DNA of his brother, genetics researchers have found.

A 34-year-old U.S. man is the first ever reported case of a paternity test fooled by a human “chimera” — someone with extra genes absorbed from a nascent twin lost in early pregnancy.

About one-in-eight single childbirths are thought to have started as multiple pregnancies. Cells from these miscarried siblings are sometimes absorbed in the womb by a surviving twin, but are only rarely discovered by surprises such as the paternity test puzzle.

“Even geneticists are blown away by this,” Barry Starr, a geneticist at Stanford University, told BuzzFeed News."
 
This effect has definitely been reported before....http://www.themedschoolproject.com/2011/10/stranger-inside-you-chimeras.html which centres around blood-group AB-O system chimeras

Also http://pictorial.jezebel.com/one-person-two-sets-of-dna-the-strange-case-of-the-hu-1689290862 which includes the reported instance of a woman who pursued blood&DNA testing in order to force paternity upon a correctly-identified father, only to find that biologically she wasn't the genetic mother of her own children.

EDIT
“Even geneticists are blown away by this,” Barry Starr, a geneticist at Stanford University, told BuzzFeed News."
No they're not!!! If they were, they shouldn't be employed as geneticists. This is internet-enabled tabloid hyperbole
 
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This is an area of popularised science that it strikes me has been remarkably-quiet for a long time.

I think it may be at least a couple of years since I've heard any mention of human chimerism. To me, the condition is particularly fascinating where it is seen to occur at the sub-organism rather than cellular level.

I think I can remember reading about the physical feasibility of possessing (for example) the wrong arm or arms...or even head.

Quite aside from any Ripley fetus-in-fetus biological extrema, I wonder if absorptive chimerism is an actual fundamental mechanism via which transgender individuals end-up feeling they are in the 'wrong' bodies?

Such a deep and complex subject area- I must find-out more about it.
 
Britain ok's allowing creation of babies with DNA from three people

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/1...g-babies-from-dna-3-people-in-some-cases.html

more at link above
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Britain's fertility regulator has approved controversial techniques allowing doctors to create babies using the DNA from three people — what it called a "historic" decision to help prevent a small number of children from inheriting potentially fatal diseases from their mothers.
The regulator's chair, Sally Chesire, on Thursday described it as a "life-changing" moment for families who might benefit from the treatment.

"Parents at very high risk of having a child with a life-threatening mitochondrial disease may soon have the chance of a healthy, genetically related child," she said in a statement.
 
They'll be too busy shoving all us inferior 'twosers' into internment camps.

I, for one, welcome our triple-DNAd overlords.
 
I'm sitting here in front of the t.v with my laptop surfing random sites when I came across this story below. I've read of and seen chimeras in animal form but never realised it was possible in humans (after some searching, it happens, though rarely). Interesting stuff.

I am my own twin: Model and musician Taylor Muhl comes out as a chimera
chimera.jpg

Tayloy Muhl is her own twin. No. Really. Unbeknownst to her, at the beginning of her pregnancy, Muhl’s mother had two fertilized eggs in her womb. But, at some point in the pregnancy, the two fused, creating one fetus with two complete genetic codes, that is, two completely separate strands of DNA. That is the definition of chimerism. Taylor Muhl is a chimera.
Muhl has two immune systems – hers and her sister’s. Hers is constantly trying to rid itself of the “foreign” system. But, of course, it can’t. The result? Autoimmune issues and flare-ups, as well as a variety of allergies. Muhl has two blood streams as well and a line down the center of her stomach, one side of the line darker than the other. The darker skin tone is her sister’s.
It took Muhl many years to want to tell her story. For one, she says, because she only found out a short time ago. “For more than half my life I didn’t even know I had chimera. I was told I had a birthmark. My mom was like a flower child so she had me naturally at home with two mid-wives. Her whole pregnancy she ate all fresh, healthy food, no caffeine.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-am...-taylor-muhl-comes_b_5a47141ee4b0d86c803c76ca
 
I'm sitting here in front of the t.v with my laptop surfing random sites when I came across this story below. I've read of and seen chimeras in animal form but never realised it was possible in humans (after some searching, it happens, though rarely). Interesting stuff.

I am my own twin: Model and musician Taylor Muhl comes out as a chimera
View attachment 29152

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-am...-taylor-muhl-comes_b_5a47141ee4b0d86c803c76ca
Wonder if that's why it looks as though she has a two-tone-tummy?
 
Wonder if that's why it looks as though she has a two-tone-tummy?

Mate, it's literally right there in the story;

"The darker skin tone is her sister’s. "

P.S. I've just realised my post sounds a bit snarky, apologies, I didn't mean it that way!
 
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Mate, it's literally right there in the story;

"The darker skin tone is her sister’s. "

P.S. I've just realised my post sounds a bit snarky, apologies, I didn't mean it that way!
Not at all "Fluttermoth: I did read the story - (not carefully enough obviously!), but didn't realise that it literally meant that the gene fusion actually would form right-down-the-middle, as 'normally' you would assume that skin tones would be genetically patchy in appearance, not form a 50/50 separation, that's all.
I do recall the Lobster's colour difference being on the News, but never new it was also possible in humans.
 
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Not at all "Fluttermoth: I did read the story - but didn't realise that it literally meant that the gene fusion actually would form right-down-the-middle, as 'normally' you would assume that skin tones would be genetically patchy in appearance, not form a 50/50 separation, that's all.

Actually chimeras often have a very distinctive bilateral symmetry, it just depends on where and how the tissues fused as the embryo formed.chimlob.jpgchimera-cardinal.jpgchimcat2.png

Imagine the two embryos as two little balloons of different colours. Squash the two balloons tightly together to make a single balloon shape; it will be half one colour and half the other, split right down the middle, that's roughly how it happens.
 
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Not at all "Fluttermoth: I did read the story - (not carefully enough obviously!), but didn't realise that it literally meant that the gene fusion actually would form right-down-the-middle, as 'normally' you would assume that skin tones would be genetically patchy in appearance, not form a 50/50 separation, that's all.

Chimerism can present effects in both ways ("patchy" versus "half 'n half"). Such clear right / left asymmetry is relatively rare in humans. In mammals such right / left asymmetries tend to cover only a portion of the overall body.

It's pretty common in (e.g.) lobsters, causing different colors / patterns to either side of the organism's long axis all the way from head to tail.

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