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Semi-Identical Twins Discovered

Posted by kdawson on from the my-brother's-a-keeper dept.

daftna writes in with a story from Nature about a pair of twins who are neither identical nor fraternal: they are semi-identical. Researchers discovered twins who share all of their mother's DNA but only half of their father's. Both children are chimeras — their cells are not genetically uniform, but include a mix of genes from two separate sperm cells that fertilized a single egg. This is, apparently, not as rare as one might think; but the resulting fetus is rarely viable. This report marks the first known incidence of two half-identical twins resulting from a double fertilization.

2 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Discovery Health "I'm my own twin" by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We're finding new chimeras every day, now that DNA testing is becoming more common. Discovery Health even had a program where genetic testing showed a mother's children to be the product of her BROTHER and her husband; though she had no brother. Turned out she was a hermaphrodite- some of her cells, including her EGGS, were male- a fraternal twin that had been absorbed early in the gestation process.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    1. Re:Discovery Health "I'm my own twin" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Could a similar event lead to a virgin giving birth? News of such an event could be of Biblical proportions.