Dad learns that unborn twin 'fathered' his son
What if you learned that your father isn’t your father at all, but rather, your real dad is his unborn twin.
'Sorry sir, you’re not the father of your newborn child—your unborn brother is.'
A 34-year-old man has been told exactly that in the only known case of a paternity test being tricked by a so-called “human chimera,” the Independent reports.
In biology, a chimera is an organism composed of genetically distinct cells.
In other words, the dad was a “human chimera” who had soaked up the genes of a twin that perished in the womb, then passed them on to the son.
It began when a US couple learned that their son, born healthy in 2014 with the aid of a fertility clinic, had a different blood type to that of his parents.
Concerned, the husband took an at-home paternity test and learned that his DNA didn’t match his son’s.
Experts believe cells and DNA from the husband's miscarried sibling were absorbed while he was still in the womb.
“You can imagine the parents were pretty upset,” Stanford University geneticist Barry Starr told BuzzFeed.
“They thought the clinic had used the wrong sperm.
“Even geneticists are blown away by this.”
The clinic assured them there was no mixup, so the couple got a lawyer and approached Starr for help.
On Starr’s advice, the father and son took DNA ancestry tests and learned that genetically the dad was his son’s uncle.
“That was kind of a eureka moment,” said Starr.
“Chimera reports are very rare, but they are real.”
Starr saw further evidence of chimerism in the father’s skin (which was two-toned in dark and light strips) and a DNA test of his semen, which identified a slight father-son genetic match of 10 per cent.
Human chimerism isn’t new, though - it’s been seen on TV shows like CSI and in real-life cases.
In one instance, a mum who took a DNA test for a kidney transplant learned she wasn’t the biological mother of two of her sons. Another woman got similar news after submitting a DNA sample for welfare payments.
“Human chimerism is very common, but exquisitely difficult to identify, coming to light almost exclusively by accidents like this,” a biologist says. (DNA tests have also opened more Shroud of Turin mysteries.)
In 2002, Lydia Fairchild was refused welfare payments in the US after DNA revealed she was not related to her children. She nearly lost her children in a case that saw the defence, who were able to prove that Fairchild was also a chimera with two sets of DNA.
Morning news break – October 27
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This article originally appeared on Newser: Dad Learns That Unborn Twin 'Fathered’ His Son
