Several cat adopters whose kitties turned out with the unique chimera characteristics have done well in sharing these beautiful felines with the public. People who frequent the internet are likely to have heard of the Chimera cat. The term chimera derives from the mythical beast called the Chimera, supposedly a lion with a snake for a tail and a goat’s head protruding from its back.Two-faced felines or slit-faced cats may be rare, but they are real. Much of the fruit we eat comes from chimeric plants, because of the widely-used practice of grafting fruit-producing branches onto the roots of another variety or species. Those that produce modified sperm or eggs are then bred to produce animals with the modification in every cell.
The resulting animals have a mix of modified and unmodified cells. Stem cells are modified outside the body and injected into early embryos. The aim of this work is to provide organs for transplantation, but the creation of animal-human chimeras is controversial.Ĭhimeric animals are often created during genetic engineering and CRISPR genome editing. Several groups around the world are now trying to grow specific organs in another species, such as a human heart in a pig. For instance, mice with human immune systems have long been used for medical research. The blood and even the semen of one transplant recipient derived from his donor, according to a recent report.įor decades, biologists have also been creating chimeras that are a mix of cells from different species. Obviously the transplanted organ comes from another individual, but cells from that organ can also start growing in other parts of the body. The number of these cells is tiny, though, so this phenomenon is known as microchimerism.Ĭells from the mother – and maybe even from previously born siblings – can get into the bodies of children too.Ĭhimerism can also occur as a result of organ transplants. Most mothers have cells from their babies growing in various parts of their body after pregnancy, and these cells can survive for at least 40 years. More commonly, cells can be exchanged during pregnancy. When individuals are a mix of male and female cells, there can also be abnormalities in the reproductive organs.
#Genetic chimera skin#
Sometimes there are visible signs, such as differently coloured eyes or patches of skin of different shades. For this reason, it is not clear how common it is. People with this form of chimerism can appear entirely normal, so it is usually discovered only by accident. Parts of the resulting individual derive from one embryo and parts from another. The most dramatic is when two embryos that would normally develop into non-identical twins fuse in the womb. Biologists are also creating chimeras whose bodies are a mix of cells from different species, such as pigs with a few monkey cells in most of their organs.Īll animals develop from a single fertilised egg, so in theory every single cell in the body should have exactly the same genome. More rarely, a single person can be a fairly equal mix of cells that appear to derive from two different individuals. Many people’s bodies contain at least a few living cells from another person. A chimera is an individual whose body is composed of cells that are genetically distinct, as if they are from different individuals – and sometimes they really are from different individuals.
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