Gchimera is an organism that contains at least two different sets of DNA. If the word seems vaguely familiar, it’s because Chimera was the hybrid creature in Greek mythology (part lion, part goat, part fire-breathing dragon) that lives on today mostly in the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. And in the Marvel universe, they’ll tell you, it’s a genetically engineered mutant with the DNA of several other mutants combined to achieve a specific set of powers.
In today’s world of science and biology, microchimerism is equally fantastical. Microchimerism is the phenomenon of the presence of cells of one individual in another genetically different individual. It’s what happens in pregnancy when cells pass between the mother and the foetus through the placenta from about the fourth week after fertilisation, in what is called ‘transplacental bi-directional cell trafficking’ – and the effects are only now becoming known.
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