3 ms·

Also see natural genetic chimerism, which is extremely rare but not unknown in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Humans https://en.wikipe

• maxerickson 7y ago
  I don't think the prevalence is well understood (situations where it is necessary to prove it out aren't common). I went to school with someone that had different colored eyes, something that is much more common than the discussion at your link.
  • patall 7y ago
    Of course we do not know exacty but there are multiple levels of evidence now that chimerism is very rare. One example would be cancer sequencing were you compare DNA from the cancer to a control tissue. I haven't heard of any of those mentioning any cases. The other case would be the recent GTEx concortia that sequenced upto 40 tissues of 600+ humans and did not detect any obvious chimera cases. Different colored eyes one the other hand my be caused by a lot of things like no-genetic reasons, but also somatic (i.e post egg fertilization) mutations like loss of one chromosome copy and others.
    • perl4ever 7y ago
      What is the probability of a (randomly selected?) control tissue of a "average" chimera having different DNA, though? I have no idea, but intuitively it would make a big difference in what fraction you detect.
• mongol 7y ago
  I read about this a while back, I got the understanding that it is poorly known how rare it is. Many cases have been found by coincidence.