On 26/07/2006, at 3:35 AM, Richard Baker wrote:
Charlie said:
It's been done with other mammals, and I wouldn't be at all
surprised if there aren't a handful of chimeric humans out there.
Apparently 8% of fraternal twins are "blood chimerae" because of
cell exchange through a shared placenta. There are various other
kinds of recorded chimerism. There are thirty or so known cases of
tetragametic chimerism (i.e. one individual formed from two ova and
two sperm). There are probably vastly more that have never been
detected as they are externally normal (although some - such as
true hermaphrodites - are more obvious). If I recall correctly,
there are also cases of adults being formed of two ova and one
sperm, including a boy whose bone marrow had only a mother and not
a father.
Here's an article on the subject originally from New Scientist:
http://www.katewerk.com/chimera.html
I meant artificial chimeras, but that illustrates the point very
nicely and I just learnt something new too. Cheers for that
Charlie
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