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A chimera is not a pet
The problem I think, is that too often a chimera is seen as a pet. We visualise chimeras as these mythical fire breathing monsters, maybe with a lion’s head, a body of a goat, and a serpent for a tail. Three distinct animals are combined into one, their individual characteristics clearly visible for us to see. In contrast, biologically, a genetic chimera is often invisible, a nightmarish combination of two different sets of DNA, a result of one or more zygotes fusing together during the early stages of prenatal development. How this alien DNA might manifest is not altogether clear, but you hear stories of mothers having different DNA than their children, and the DNA from semen and saliva not matching in rape tests. To look for distinctions in chimeras would be the first step towards their domestication, treating the hybrid animal as another family member, a pet. But you cannot cuddle the long lost...More
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Press Release
A chimera is not a pet
The problem I think, is that too often a chimera is seen as a pet. We visualise chimeras as these mythical fire breathing monsters, maybe with a lion’s head, a body of a goat, and a serpent for a tail. Three distinct animals are combined into one, their individual characteristics clearly visible for us to see. In contrast, biologically, a genetic chimera is often invisible, a nightmarish combination of two different sets of DNA, a result of one or more zygotes fusing together during the early stages of prenatal development. How this alien DNA might manifest is not altogether clear, but you hear stories of mothers having different DNA than their children, and the DNA from semen and saliva not matching in rape tests. To look for distinctions in chimeras would be the first step towards their domestication, treating the hybrid animal as another family member, a pet. But you cannot cuddle the long lost...More