chimeras

Tom Scocca · 09/18/13 03:15PM

The New York Times reports that between mutations, resorbed twins, invasive fetal cells, marrow transplants, and who-knows-what-else, what looks like one individual person—maybe you!—is often in fact a chimeric mashup of multiple different sets of DNA. In one Canadian autopsy study, 63 percent of women had some male neurons in their brains, presumably from "cells originating in their sons."