DNA Saga; Before You Accuse Him/her, Have You Heard Of A Human Chimera?

Ducan Mighty is the latest to raise DNA issues about his daughter. While we can certainly not trust anyone, it's important to be sure you know what you are talking about especially when kids are involved.

The public should be wary in commenting on allegations because, you know human errors.

A mental brakedown?

Some could just be out for revenge?

Errors from labs?

Chimeraism?

Please, read with an open mind.

People that have two different sets of DNA are called human chimeras.

It can happen when a woman is pregnant with fraternal twins and one embryo dies very early on. The other embryo can "absorb" its twin's cells.

It can also happen after a bone marrow transplant, and (in a smaller scale) during normal pregnancy.

Human chimeras aren't the result of futuristic genetic tinkering. They can occur naturally, and some people don't even know that they've doubled up on DNA.

In 2015, a man from Washington took a cheek swab paternity test that said he was technically his son's uncle, not his father. Further testing revealed that the man had different DNA in his saliva and his sperm. Genetic experts believed he was a human chimera, and he had absorbed some of his DNA from a fraternal twin's embryo, BuzzFeed reported.

A woman named Karen Keegan wound up in a similar situation. Tests said she wasn't the biological mother of her children, but it turned out that the DNA in her blood was different than the DNA in her ovaries. Doctors said her extra DNA most likely came from a fraternal twin — and in 2002 her story became a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Since twin loss occurs in an estimated 21 to 30% of multiple-fetus pregnancies, it's possible that many people are chimeras, but may never find out. One genetic expert told BuzzFeed that deliberately testing for chimerism is very difficult, and that there's no real need to do those tests in healthy people.