Human Chimerism...

[Godzilla78]

While I feel very sorry for the woman in the article, it seems that her issue is the autoimmune disease that she has, not being a chimera. In general most people who are chimeras don't even know unless there is something like DNA testing for child support that comes up in their life. Even that might not catch it depending on the patterning of their cells v. where the DNA sample is taken from.

Interestingly, chimerism does seem to have a genetic basis, and there's a pretty amusing article written about how it is actually very common in marmosets. For marmosets it's an evolutionary adaptation in order to motivate more adults to care for each offspring. Since snakes don't typically care for offspring, and especially not male snakes, chimerism probably isn't something that has been selected for in the wild. However, I'd guess that it would theoretically be possible to breed and artificially select for chimeras in order to create lines that were more prone to it.

It seems you missed the part in the article that said her auto-immune disease is caused by her having 2 sets of DNA and 2 immune systems, so it is inherent in being a chimera to have this problem.


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