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Chimera Twins Story

Posted by Hemos on from the learn-more-about-it dept.

skelley writes "Below is an audio link on this morning's story on NPR about Chimera twins, or people with two sets of DNA. It turns out that every once in a while a set of fraternal twin eggs merge into one embryo. The resulting person has two sets of DNA. The story says it is possible for a Chimera to have different sets of DNA in different body parts. This can cause complication for body identification, DNA typing for organ transplants, crime investigation, etc. Researchers have no idea how common this is, but suppose that it is a reasonable percentage of all fraternal twin pregnancies, which would mean millions worldwide. No text version. NPR often doesn't publish one. "

6 of 483 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Odd by timbloid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    but remember Jurassic Park

    Hee hee, a molecular biologist quoting Jurrassic Park?

  2. Re:Gonna be more common. by Abcd1234 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Forget invitro. The increasing use of fertility drugs in the past 15-20 years has caused a massive increase in multiple births, and likely increased the number of Chimeras as well.

  3. Re:finally, a valid excuse by Pray_4_Mojo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Isn't it highly funny that a "public" radio station has choosen an exclusive, proprietary solution?

    There are open source streaming servers (shoutcast, Quicktime streaming server) and plenty of other, commercial servers that rely on open-standards (just like real radio) so that choice of client is irrelevant and up to the user.

    My other sig was /.'d

  4. um...mod parent funny? by aastanna · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's kind of odd this got modded interesting when the pictures are of chocolate mice. I suspect the moderators didn't bother to follow the links.

  5. Re:Micheal Jackson now makes sense by cheesedog · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Funny. Truly.

    So it is with some reluctance that I have to be a wet blanket... I know a sweet little girl who suffers from the same pigmentation disease as Jackson. It is called vitiligo, and although not health-threatening, it can be somewhat difficult for children who get labeled as "different" because of the light splotches that appear on the skin, and then spread. When it grows to cover more than 50% of the body, many opt to bleach the remaining <50% so that they are at least all one tone. I believe such is the case with Jackson.

    Of course, it doesn't help that Jackson is a freak in many other ways, but there are thousands and thousands of people in this country, many of them children, who suffer from this condition without being freaks in any other way.

    They are lucky when compared to the diseases that afflict many other people, but the disease is relatively unknown, so I thought I'd add a few words here in their defense (but not in Jackson's -- he's on his own :)

  6. Re:NPR Funding by _krimson_ · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Forget NPR. They have an slant to the left as bad as Rush Limbaugh has to the right.

    You can only believe that if you listen exclusively to Rush, and he told you so.

    If you actually listened to NPR, you would realize that they are the only organization besides the BBC that is anywhere near "fair and balanced."