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Chimera Twins Story
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.
"
so now when your liver commits a crime, it can be convicted seperately?
I would like to be able to decide which of the two sets of DNA are set as 'active' at a given time. That would be nice for things like murdering my wife and whoever she is sleeping with outside of our house, and then getting away with the crime.
If the DNA don't fit.. well.. uhh.. ahh shit.
"My evil twin brother did it. Honest."
The interesting thing is that since invitro fertilization has a much higher probability of twins (or more), chimeras will become more common.
This is perfect for /. It's impossible to RTFA
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
we should study this so we can give different parts of ourselves different DNA. If it is to be appropriated as a universal identification and control technology, we have to give it up if we want to remain sovereign. It is not that far away to have DNA identified radio tagging of people and, thus, near-absolute control.
No text version. NPR often doesn't publish one.
Oh ho ho, methinks they'll change their mind very shortly.
Doesn't DNA to some extent at least determine blood type? Would it be possible to have two blood types? Surely not, but as I do not have any way to listen to the link I will never know until some kind soul gives us the gist of it.
One of the X chromosomes is mostly disabled a little bit past conception (after the cells have divided a good amount though). However, which one is disabled is random at this time, which means different regions of the body derived from the original cell will have different X chromosomes disabled (into what's called a Barr body). This is all very screwy which is why females are very screwy.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
And I thought images were bad when getting /.ed...
Any known birth defects/oddities arrise from this which manifest themselves in the physical sence? IE if your trying to test someone's DNA and realise they have blond hair on one half of there skull and black on the other you would know something was up.
O.J. is INNOCENT! It was my.... uhh.... other DNA...
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
...but do they have +2 attack strength?
Ah, computer dating -- it's like pimping, but you rarely have to use the phrase "upside your head" -- Bender
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.
Wouldn't this cause complications a little more important to the individual than those listed? Like say, stuff not fitting together right? I mean, I wouldn't want to try and build a working car from half Ford Explorer parts and half Ford Focus parts.
I wonder how many people with this condition die before birth or at a very young age.
Nature published a short article on this a couple of years ago that we covered in our Journal Club meeting at my lab. The only one people detect right now are chimeric male/female twin pairs because its so easy but they had lots of cool shots under UV light where you can actally see like tiger striping of the two chimeric skin types. That was my favorite part.
Anther great aricle about Chimera twins that I was reading eariler is here. Man this stuff is really interesting. It actually says that about 8% of non-identical twins are chimera twins. That's actually pretty high.
Since NPR only provides an audio link, here are some text sites with info on chimeric twins (genetic mosaics).P ages/M/Mosaics.html
[Genetic Mosaics] http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/Biology
Google search for Genetic Mosaics
And for the non-biologists
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
DNA typing for... crime investigation
Interesting phenomena in itself, but I wonder if there are people who would (or already) exploit this sort of pseudo-anonymitity. Does anyone know how far this dual-DNA goes? can individual hairs have differing DNA? or will the blood have different DNA than the hair or skin? (I am not a biologist, so please be kind regarding these questions)
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
You can reconstitute the absorbed brother/sister through cloning the right cell?
Could he/she then sue their sibling for attempted murder?
Why not try this, turn on the radio, the story should be on again shortly after 8:30 PDT.
No need to slashdot when the show is still available over the air.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Heheh.. i wonder if mr. bruckheimer will get his scripters to put this into some episode of CSI...
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
Pardon me, Sir.
But what in the name of Hawking are you babbling about?
In Greek mythology the Chimera was part lion, goat and serpent. This is why people with organ or limb transplants are sometimes referred to as a Chimera. So my question... do these people also present the same identification complications?
to take multiple DNA samples from a suspect.
hair, blood, cheek, and perhaps ejaculatory(if it is a male)
then compare them, if they al match, then the DNA should be considered accurate.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I wish researchers would stop giving bad movie plot ideas to hack screenwriters. Now it's just a matter of time before the "Phantom Twin Killer" is playing at the local cineplex.
--If 50,000 people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
You know the people I'm talking about, the ones whose bodies are somehow demented and just don't seem to fit together. Torso too big for the legs,legs too long for the torso, head too big, and so on.
Probably not, but there's got to be an explanation for this phenomena.
When I heard the story this morning, I thought of bone marrow transplants. In that case, aren't you getting someone else's blood-generating cells? And wouldn't your blood cells then contain someone else's DNA?
It seems like they'd make a Law & Order or CSI episode from this: a career criminal arranges to get a bone marrow transplant from someone whose DNA is known to authorities, but who hasn't yet been apprehended (ooh, big word!). Then, the real bad guy can leave all the blood he wants at the crime scene, and never worry about being tracked.
Of course, the side effects would probably make a lifestyle of violent crime a bit more difficult than, say, the odd embezzlement here and there.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
There's an organizitaion called the The Innocence Project headed by Barry Scheck which prides itself on freeing prisoners who didn't have the technology of DNA testing avaible to them during their trials.
In light of this article, I wonder how many guilty people have been set free. I'm sure there are guilty parties that proclaim their innocence and see no harm or foul in having the DNA testing done by said non profit organization, in hopes of some fluke in their favor.
It's just his white Chimera brother finally coming out after all these years.
The human genome isn't like the automarket...That is you're still building 1 car, but all the parts can be slightly different, but come from 1 supplier. After all, in a normal diploid animal (ie. humans) half of the chromosome content is from the mother, the other half from the father. As far as liver, heart, skin, etc. all working together, there is no problem with this.
There is a problem though with the immune system. Since each organism's cells contain a unique combination of cell surface receptors that let's their body know the difference between "self" and a bug or virus, then depending which copy of DNA founded the cells of the thymus (where "self" is first determined), a chimera's immune system could see cells with the other DNA set as foreign - causing a massive systemic allergic reaction. The good news is that chimeras with this problem would spontaneously abort within the first few months of the pregnancy, so if a chimeric human is born, they probably don't have to worry to much about such genetic mismatches.
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
two sets of dna produce two different sets of oragn, tissue, cell, antigens that identify these parts as belonging to body..
Chimera embryo would not survie due too much body rejection of the parts of body that has the different dna..
The only case where thsi cannot happen and regualr occurs is the difference between human cell dan..or human genome nuclear and mitochrondia dna which produce no antigens but is diferent from the nuclear dna in that is the mother inherited mitochroindia dna form mother of the offspring..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Dr. Jeckle(sp?) and Mr. Hyde isn't too far fetched after all. The "formula" Jeckle drinks to become Hyde simple turns on the alternate DNA sequence.
--Im an oven mitt, not an engineer! (SLArbys Radio Commercial)
But here is an artists sketch of what one of these Chimera twins might look like.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The Y chromosome is pretty screwy in its own right.
I've been told that the propensity to produce fraternal twins is an inherited trait, unlike identical twins. Is this Chimera twin state also inherited, or is it a random mutation?
I realize you're making a joke, but Chimera's would have different DNA in different parts of the body. A swab from the mouth might have different DNA then a blood sample. However, if there was a match, this would still indicate that the person who gave the sample and the sample found at the scene were almost certainly the same person.
A Chimera would create a false negative, because the DNA extracted from the cells in the mouth would not match the DNA of the blood at the scene.
It might be a best practice to test the same type of cells when doing a DNA test(gross for rape cases), especially considering that no one knows how many chimerae there are out there(Especially since each Chimera hides an occurence of fraternal twins, so our estimates on the frequency of fraternal twins are now less accurate).
My other sig is extremely clever...
Sometimes somebody actually posts something that deserves +5 funny.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Apparently the brain got the bad half (thank god she can't read my /. log)
Am I the only one who read the title and thought, "Finally! All this messing with genes has produced something useful, a fire-breathing Chimera with a lion's head and a goat's body"? On a more serious note, the nature article in a similiar vein is here.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
now that i know what a chimera is, it makes the star destroyer of the same name seem less bad-ass. oh well.
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
Wouldn't the body be compatible with boths sets of dna? Otherwise how would the current bodyparts communicate with eachother? That would mean Chimera Twins will have a broader range of organs to choose from.
If not the solution would be to extract dna from the part that needs to be replaced
not a gif :)
this is going to cause problems with using DNA as evidence in criminal causes. If scientists claim that people may have mixed DNA, then it's not going to be long before some defense attorney uses that to get his client acquitted, or some shady DA uses that to get a conviction that s/he wanted.
I had always heard that a person that has eyes of different colors is really a chimeral twin.
...that lone white glove.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Here is a pretty freaky story of a boy who seems to have assumed his twin in the womb. No one knew until when,at age seven, he had a stomach ache and surgeons removed his brother.
Technically, then, these people are actually two people rolled into one. They should get to vote twice at the voting booth, and should pay double to get into the movies.
In addition, their Slashdot posts should be modded up or down at double the normal amount.
Part of your problem is that you're dealing with a Siamese. All cats are psychotic, granted, (and I love cats), but Siamese cats really take the cake.
While I don't know for sure if I am a chimera, I was born with XX/XY sex chromosomes, something I only found out in my early 20s.
For many of us born this way we don't appear to be completely male or female and like most I was surgically "repaired" very soon after birth. This means I had what appeared to be testicles removed, testicles which MAY have permitted me to have children one day. Part of my body was stolen because I looked different. I was raised female, always felt that didn't quite fit, and it took me a lot of messing through courts to obtain my birth records. As I am now I have to settle with knowing where I fit originally, why I am like I am, and can accept living as a mostly normal female. By nature however, I was born part male part female. That's me. The chance to live and develop naturally was stolen from me.
It's fucked. Science continues to find so many variations on human development but society so often manages to force decisions on people. How odd that I was considered unnatural enough when I was born that doctors decided surgery was the only acceptable option, when my birth and very existence is just one more facet of nature.
For more info on how intersexed kids (chimeric or any other variation) are treated, see isna.org
Regarding organ rejection: rejection is a "trained" response. Fetuses/embryos can recieve organs without fear of rejection, because the immune response is not trained against the offending organ. That's why some people can have two different blood types: they recieved some blood of a different blood type before they were born, and their immune system adapted to this other type of blood and accepted it as part of the body. That's why chimeras can exist.
I am legion.
--- Ban humanity.
That's Jekyll ;) Here's the book for those interested.
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
This link has some good information on Chimeras. Including a discussion of the lady featured in NPR.
g yP ages/M/Mosaics.html
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/Biolo
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Could it be possible that this is evolution taking over and protecting us from the various different tracking measures that will one day soon be put in place?
I know it sounds paranoid. It's really just dumb speculation. But, what if...
Normal male = Xy (any extra "X" are abnormal, but even a XXXXy is still male - all but one X gets deactivated - but usually has serious medical problems). Normal female = XX (extra "X"s do not create supermodels, it creates medical problems)
Take a look at any calico or tortoise shell cat. What you are seeing is the result of random deactivation of one of the X chromosome early in the development of the embryo, and the random appearance of the colors (black or orange) on that chromosome. Humans have few easily testable traits that are testible for chimerism: one blood group is all I can think of at the moment, that "lives" on the X chromosome.
For calico or tortie males (yes, they exist, and no they are not valuable) the division between the colors is a good indicator of how badly screwed up their sex chromosomes are. A male that is mostly orange with one small black patch probably acts like a tomcat and will show very few cells of the XXY pattern, and might even have that abnormality limited to that spot. One that is well-mottled with black and orange is probably not interested in breeding and will show mnay more abnormal XXY cells.
In order to test this for the possibility to screw up DNA identification, they could start by testing the known chimeras - cats.
Any court appointed expert worth his salt will give the jury a detailed, precise p-value for the probability that the DNA came from some other person. A simple t-test is all that is needed for this.
Given the known variability of the population of DNA, it is not uncommon to have a p-value of 1E-8. That means there's a 1 in 100,000,000 chance that someone else committed the crime. In other words, there's about 3 people in the U.S. who match that DNA. Reasonable doubt? Your call.
Now admittedly, if you have p-values of anything less that 1E-3 or 4 being admitted into court, you should laugh the "expert" out of the courtroom.
Gee - either I have to load up the sucky real media player to hear it, or I have to agree to let MS onto my system any thime they want via the EULA for windows media player nine.
Guess I won't be listening to NPR on the web anytime soon.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
My other sig is extremely clever...
What woman? I'm not sure what you're talking about, but for murder there have been either an intention to kill, or at the very least, a willfull involvement in an action that is known have a very high chance of leading to another's death. Do either of these situations qualify? Was it a willfull act? I don't think so. I'm not sure since I'm not completly sure which "this women"(sic) you're talking about.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
The solution to this problem is obvious.
Simply require id chip implants at birth.
Problem solved.
Nothing else left to discuss here.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Internet spell checkers might also be of some "convenience" :)
My other sig is extremely clever...
I've watched enough CSI to know that they could figure out that the two different DNA's were similar enough to do a little more snooping. I imagine it would look at first like it was a close relative.
Switching to Linux can be an adventure!
Discussing a woman found to be a chimera, an article on Mosaics found that: Since they don't simply state that she is incapable of producing t-cells, then there may be something in there to allow for selectively suppressing an immunoresponse (sp?) that could be valuable.
I think I oughta patent it now before someone with the ability to actually find it does.
Does anybody else here see someone with two sets of dna becoming a supercriminal? I know I would.
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
These people have two sets of DNA, but the other set comes from their fraternal twin... at worst, the other set of DNA is as closely related to them as a brother or sister. And in all cases, they would still have half of their DNA from their mother, and half from the father -- just like anyone else. It wouldn't seem that this would cause much of a problem in terms of body part mismatch, since the situation is not that much different from a normal single baby.
What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
Reading the post but refusing to listen to the audio clip got me interested in searching Google for all of this. I came across one link in particular, which is very interesting:
Genetic Mosaics
The writer discusesses a tetraparental mouse and a tetragametic human.
In a sense a non-chimeras already have different sets of DNA in different body parts. The DNA expresses differently in a liver cell vs. skin or some other cell type. These differences appear to be controlled epigenetically: not in the DNA sequence itself, but in the run-time environment particular to any given cell type. Just because these differences are epigenetic, doesn't mean they are not structural and important.
DNA Methylation and chromatin structure appear to control the epigenetic regulation of the DNA. These issues appear the be the reason behind cloning problems, where taking DNA expressing run-time environment appropriate for an adult cell doesn't always work in a embryo.
Thanks for the advice, Herr Himmler ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
IANAL, but IUTWIBB ... I used to work in blood banks doing crossmatches. A small number of people have two different ABO blood types. They are not "AB", they have some red blood cells that are pure "A" and some that are pure "B" and that is violating Mendelian genetics. The same mechanism that creates this could easily create other "blood chimeras" with the other several hundred lesser-known blood types. And a third mechanism (sex chromosome abnormalities) can create a kind of blood chimera that has nothing to do with twins.
Apparently, most of these blood chimera individuals shared a blood supply with a non-identical twin before birth (the cells that make blood and populate your bone marrow float around the fetal blood supply while waiting for bones to develop to give them a place to settle, and the placentas and their blood vessels can merge without producing conjoined twins). In some cases, people are unaware that they had a twin because he or she died early in gestation and was spontaneously aborted (or disintegrated by the mother's defense mechanisms, or walled off in the mother or living twin). They show up in the National Enquirer when someone is operated on for a cyst and it has bits of the encysted twin in it.
As many as 8% of non-identical twins may have chimeric blood. Some people are microchimeric--they have a small amount of blood of a different type in their system that has persisted from a blood transfusion or passed across the placental barrier from their mother before birth.
"Blood chimerism" does NOT cause a problem for the person with the chimerism as far as receiving blood in a transfusion ... they will tolerate any phenotype they possess if you transfuse it - they have had it since they were fetuses and it is "self" in the immunological sense of the word.
It can, however, be hell on blood banks trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with the blood during the initial typing and screening in a transfusion where the blood chimera is the donor. The potential recipient is not at risk because the tech says &^$^$#%@!!!, sets the donor unit back in the frig with a "do not use" note and sends it off to a research lab to find out what's going on. That's how you usually find blood chimeras and new blood types ... anomalous results in what should be a routine crossmatch.
Apologies if this is mentioned in the radio program (I have not listened to it), but it seems to me that even if there are theoretically "millions" of these multiple DNA chimera born each year, is it not likely that a very large percentage of them are stillborn due to complications brought on by their condition? The number of *living* chimera may be much smaller.
I find your biological comments interesting but I have to say that if you are going to use a latin tag as your sig, you might consider running your note through a spell-checker. Sudden discoveries like 'Occures' works hard to spoil the effect.
This, by the way, is by no means a flame. I like your note. It makes me want to know more.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
Me and my brother was born with a merged placenta. My mother tells us how when we were conceived we were to separate eggs but that we were so close to being alike that our placentas merged so we were born like identical twins. Where can I find more research on this? Any slashdotters know?
Um, it was a farcical joke dude. Not necessarily a good one, but still.
If it was any warmer around here, I'd die of frostbite...
I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
Cool! I found a picture of those striped mice. Some more pictures:
Closeup before eyes are formed.
In-vitro development in the lab.
Displaying remarkable inteligence as they swarm and are about to devour their much-bigger and unsuspecting prey (apparently striped mice are carnivorous)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I, for one, welcome our chimeric overlords...
Attend to the fact that if one of a set of fraternal twins dies ('blighted ovum' might be the term used) ..
then it could have 'died' because of assimilation of its DNA into the 'surviving twin' , and there would therefore be NO evidence that the resulting singleton birth ever was one of a pair
So , any search for the prevelance of thi Chimera condition must include analysis of ALL births, not just obvious fraternal twins.
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
In females, one of the X chromosomes becomes a barr body, and the other one is used for things like mitochondria. Because it's random which is used, you can get patches of different chromosomes being used in different areas, giving rise to things to things like calico patterned cats (almost always female), slightly different skin in different areas of the body, and so on..
(I think.. I'm not a biologist)
http://yersex.tilegarden.com/
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
What you witnessed is no different than what everyone else "witnesses" while on an acid trip. You gotta try to not freak out and go running to the Baptists everytime demons start eating your eyelids.
Look at the bright side. It provided you with an excellent chance to crow about Jesus.
and thats exactly the reason its my sig :)
I guess this will accelerate the need for IPv6, since Chimeric Twins will needs twice as many IP addresses. Sure, they can use NAT, but what is the point to having the extra DNA if you can't independantly address it.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020429/020429-13.html
Marques Johansson
But should still be easy to clone. Just use "cp".
Yes, mod me off-topic. See if I care.
I don't need a signature.
Probably it was just a joke. The statement: "Thank god I'm an atheist" implies that the person believes in god.
Then again, maybe its because he is an atheist and wants people to be aware that there are differing viewpoints. A great many Christians in the US seem to think that everyone else in the country is also a Christian. Stating that you're an atheist is similar to driving around with a Jesus fish on your car.
And, just as an FYI, warning an atheist about hell has about as much effect as telling the average adult that if they misbehave, Santa won't bring them any presents. In other words, none.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
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I believe the idea here is the vagueness of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. It was introduced in the Congress in 1999, with the purpose of making it a crime if an individual causes death or injury to "a member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of development," including zygotes.
The confusion here is that tetragametic woman discussed on the NPR program is the product of two fused zygotes. This creates an interesting dilemma, since two eggs are fertilized but only one child is born. If the vagueness of the UVVA where to be upheld, it could be (naively) asserted that since the pregnancy began as two "unborn" members of the human species but ended in only one, that death or injury was caused to one of the zygotes.
While such arguments are poorly constructed, as is the religously-driven legislation, it can have legal ramifications for women who have had unviable fetuses naturally aborted. Such considerations belittle the complexity of human life in return for a simple minded religious explanation. Along with the quasi-legal arguments, much "deeper" philosophical issues relating to identity and self remain unsettling.
Nonetheless, it is an extremely interesting situation which only works to make life all the more interesting.
According the recnt book "The X Chromosome" , the second "X" chromosome in females is 95% deactivated because it is redundant. These become "Barr bodies" which float about independently of the other DNA. An X chromosome is contributed from the mother and father to a female child. In human females, either can be deactivated in a cell. (In other species, sometimes one parental X is only deactivated.)
It is suggested that the higher incidence of auto-immune conditions in females, e.g. lupus, chronic fatigue, etc. may be the immune system reacting againts one of the parental X. (The are alternative hypotheses for auto-immune problems.)
Humans can exist with as few as one X and no Y, up to three or four X's, due the deactivations of the extras X's. Most other chromosome miscounts cause miscarriages. X/Y miscounts happen about one in every 300 births.
You ate your twin before birth. Guilty!
With all that "lack of funding" it is interesting how the top 3 people at WQED in Pittsburgh can be pulling down over $400K combined. When that came out in the local scandal sheet a few years ago, I quit contributing to their pledge drives.
As far as a balanced news coverage.... Forget NPR. They have an slant to the left as bad as Rush Limbaugh has to the right. Their accuracy in reporting leaves a lot to be desired also.
I believe that as long as the Gov't supports them in any way, they should be held accountable for unbiased, accurate reporting of events.
But then again, in a perfect world like that, Apple, Microsoft, SCO, IBM and Sun would all be looking out for the customer's best interest!
Because the ones who didn't died?
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.
that damn browser pronunciation problem.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I thought it was a TV show about the life of that singer. You know, "Chimera Twin's Story".
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So that's a way to know the cat's female too?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Heh heh. Hell is as scary as hell. Who woulda thunk it?
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
More often than not, things don't go right.
Everyone has heard of Downs syndrome, when a child has an "extra" chromosome. Well, think of having twenty three extra pairs.
I am a fraternal twin, and I don't know if I am a chimera or not, but my wife and I have had trouble with a similar situation of too much DNA. Last year, we had a molar pregnancy.
"What is that?" you may ask. A molar pregnancy happens when an egg is fertilized, but no baby is formed. It happens when the egg "looses" the genetic information from the mother (complete molar), or has three sets of chromosomes (69 total, partial molar). Molar pregnancies are about 1 in 1500 births, with 98% of those being the complete type.
Either way, it is a horrific experience, and should be considered cancerous. The mother's hormone levels will climb to dangerous levels as the mass of cells that should have been an embryo rapidly grow and divide inside the womb. She will become extremely pregnant, without a child, and morning sickness becomes a 24 hour a day nightmare. Relief only comes with complete removal of all molar tissue. After this, the mother has to be monitored and be "pregnancy free" for a year, to tell if any of the molar tissue has become cancerous.
Our case was a partial molar. If things would have gone right, we would now have a set of identical twins, but it didn't. DNA is a funny and powerful thing and too much is never good.
-- Len
THis is a nosy queston, so feel free to tell me to go to hell, but which do you feel you should have been? A man, a woman, or somewhat a mix of both?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Wow, can you imagine the fun on one of those idiotic Paternity Test TV shows when they bring the results? "Uhmm, you're both the father!" Or introductions? "I'd like you to meet my liver's dad, and this is the dad of the rest of me..." (Answer that Miss Manners!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This mucks up the whole crime lab and paternity mess quite a bit. What if one of a pair of twins is a chimera, part identical twin and part not (not looking identical)? With triplets and quadruplets ... the combinatorics might be insane. A female twin with a long lost male brother being convicted of rape on DNA evidence?
if one had 2 blood types could they give themselves aids?
What about triplets then? If it's possible to have a Chimera twin, I don't see a reason why triplets wouldn't be possible too. "Well sir, according to our DNA tests, you're an entire family on your own."
Actually, there aren't any immune system problems. The knowledge of which protiens are "other" and which are "us" isn't stricktly geneticly encoded, so the immune cells grow up recognizing all the protiens that the person's body produces. I expect that massibly chimeric (hundreds of genetic sources) organisms might run into problems as the number of protiens recognized as "self" greatly exceeds normal, and might grow to encompass all the protiens produced by some random disease (at which point the organism is f***ed) but there don't seem to be any problems for two part chimeras.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
I heard this article this morning, it was amazing. The woman was shocked to hear that she couldn't possibly be the mother of the children she distinctly remembered giving birth to. They tested the father as well, and it was clear that he was indeed the father -- so it wasn't a case of kids being switched at birth. It took quite a while for them to determine that she was a chimera. [That's KY-mer-a, I had always pronounced it SHIM-er-a].
:)
She was somewhat worried that her kids wouldn't think of her as her mother, but now that she understands it better she sees that she's both the mother and aunt of her kids.
The article said that scientists make chimeras of other animals all the time, and sometimes even between one species and another. There are 'geeps' which are chimeras of goats and sheep, for example.
As other people mention, they have found larger percentages of chimeras in in vitro conceived children; which makes sense because they usually implant multiple embryos.
Anyway, it's one of those articles that makes NPR worthwhile
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Did anybody else here, upon learning of Chimeras, immdediatly think of the Daggers in Seaquest?
I mean, they've got the striped skin, they don't breed true, they're a perfect example of what a human chimera with strongly disparate genetic sources would look like. Of course, natural chimeras get all they're genes from the same set, and from only two sources too, so they don't look as interesting, but ain't-it-cool?
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
This sounds like a really cheesy end-boss to an 80s video game.
Mosaics aren't Chimeras.
However, before the launch of Safari, I was using Chimera, a descendent of Mosaic.
Told ya. Worst joke evar.
My other computer is your Windows box
When I use my left hand it feels like someone else!!! Coincidence, I think not.
[ Don't reply to this ]
You've already drank a few beers?
Wait! Why do they limit discussion of this phenomenon to just the merging of fraternal twins? Why, I could be the product of a merger between myself and my own identical twin. And, the implications of that are... uh... well, something.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
Actually, blood types of a baby can be incommpatible with mom. They don't share the bloodstream, they have the placenta as a nutrient exchange interface that theoretically should swap no blood. Think about it: Mother is Ao - A from one parent, o from the other - which makes her blood type A, and the father is, say Bo, B from one parent and o from the other. An o sperm could fertilize and o egg, creating a oo genotype, which would be blood type O - this child would be killed if mom's blood got into his body. Many other crosses also generate incompatible mother/baby blood types in one direction or the other.
> "Scary as Iowa"
AAAAAGGH!!!! Geez, man, warn us next time! You scared the New Jersey out of me!
"and on a sidenote, if satan is 'scary as hell'...i should be 'scary as wisconsin'"
brrr... You just gave me the willies!
"Now come on, was Wisconsin that bad?"
There is a good picture of Lobster which displays this caught in Nova Scotia there are also lobsters that are blue and red like a checkerboard (only four squares), but I couldn't find photos of them so easily
Just make sure to use some Wyoming to wipe that Jersey off of your Utah.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I tried searching some info on the web about Chimeras but apart from the same definitions, theres nothing.
I'm curious, are there any obvious signs a person is heavily a chimera as in Downs Syndrome or Autism? What are the DNA percentages.... I suspect theyre around 1% outside DNA for bone marrows and the like, is there a chimera person with more than 30% outside DNA? Is there someone with chimera in his brain and what are the syndromes?
Lastly, has there ever been siamese twins who are not identical... ie 50% chimera?
So little is known...
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Thanks... this is what I was actually looking for, but kept running into those damn chocolate mice. parent's link. Too bad it's only one "stripe", but still neat.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
haha that's only half true. I ate the most shrooms in my life in may and proved God's existence to myself. I didn't talk to anyone, I just had a moment of clear thought. I'm not sure how I did it but it made perfect sense at the time :)
Either way, a quarter of purple shrooms and two blunts is not the way to effectively prepare for a final the next day!
PS people bitching about atheism: there's no such thing as atheism, it's just as extreme as believing in an intangible (G)(g)od. Both require a substantial amount of illogic, but that's what makes us all interesting. But seriously, he was joking.
> if one had 2 blood types could they give themselves aids?
I feel stupid that I have to ask if you are serious.
I resemble that remark!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
It was a joke, idiot. And it was in his sig, it wasn't part of the message.
Read it again: "Thank god I'm atheist". Why would an atheist be thanking god? Because it's a joke.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
The whole point is that science isn't "blind", you can't be 100% sure what is/isn't true, but fundamentaly you are basing your decision on evidence. Any good scientist should realise that any theories could be wrong, plenty end up going back on their own ideas/work because someone else comes up with evidence to refute it.
If you are calling support of scientific principles "blind faith" then I'd disagree as fundamentally they are just common sence, weigh up evidence for an against, and if there is none either way than don't make any assumptions.
This brings up some interesting questions. First off, what are the implications for the present organ donation system? The radio story talks about a women who discovered her condition when she needed a kidney, and her own children were tested as incompatable. It turns out that they inherited genes from one of her sets and that was not the genome responsible for her blood supply. But what about the other possibility. I need a kidney, my sister tests as a viable donor, but it turns out her kidney has a different genome then the one that tested positive for a match. The kidney gets transplanted and my body rejects it. How often does this happen in real life?
Also, is anyone studying the way the body's immune system handles having two omnipresent genomes? What implications, if any, does this have for the study of drugs that could help lower the threat of organ rejection?
Does anyone know the answers to these questions, and if not, is anyone looking into them?
So I was reading this chimera twins story...
What? You want me to give away the ending?
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
why did you edit out some of the "why cats are better then women" ?
"Thank god I'm an atheist" is a quote from surrealist director Luis Bunuel.
I think he meant that because of his religious education he was atheist.
Yeah, that's all we need. You look at a girl, and you're like "damn! you're fine", then she turns and you see she has her sister's ass...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
bad cut and paste?
My wife had an interesting idea, Could it be possible that transgenderism is caused by a female (or male) twin stuck in the others body? A simple sample or two of DNA from the brain and... um.. genitals would let you know if transgendered people are in fact chimeras.
meh
Others, like the one below, state that initial tests that cleared him were "errors".
The Rostov Ripper
This link says:
Apparently HBO made a movie, Citizen X about this case. I haven't seen it, so I don't know how it deals with the DNA aspect.
If the organs or systems of one chromosome set fails for whatever reason, the other one automatically takes over.
*duck*
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
This is unlikely to occur without active medical intervention, but in theory you could get twins who are genetically 'unrelated' by taking the two halves of each parental zygote (XX and xy) and cross-fertilizing them (Xx and Xy). I am not a geneticist, and this came originally from an offhand comment by a character in a Robert Heinlein story.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=6665 839&sid=74320 for the curious.
Also, you have to depend on your post being seen by someone who understands what you are saying. And here is your third obstacle:
It would also help if your story had some scientific accuracy to it, not tabloid-style hyperbole.
It was a joke, idiot. And it was in his sig, it wasn't part of the message.
Read it again: "Thank god I'm atheist". Why would an atheist be thanking god? Because it's a joke.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not really out to get you.
TELL ME WHY THEY ARE OUT TO GET HIM!!!!!
Thank God I'm paranoid!
For a fine exposition on the legal implications, in the old-science view, I'd recommend the Mark Twain novel _Pudd'nhead_Wilson_ It's of some interest, too, to the enthusiasts who are trying to get DNA data on all felons, and would like to get it on all citizens and visitors as well. They can't claim to have a magic bullet anymore (but the more important issue, for crime solving, is whether there'd be any false positive matches, and twins are the big issue there).
Mmmmmm.... Chimera Twin.....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
They don't have to make the archives available on the web, and if they had to transcribe everything they posted, I'd imagine they would just remove the archives.
I'm glad you're so 'concerned' about the rights of the disabled (which is very evident from your 'nprsucks.com' link). If you're mad because you think NPR has a liberal bias (or whatever your reason might be), then just say it.