Man Fails Paternity Test Because Unborn Twin Is The Biological Father Of His Son

even maury would be stumped

So a human chimera had a child and apparently his reproductive bits and the rest of his body have different genetic origins as he and his unborn twin fused into a singly body somewhere in-utero

A genetic chimerism or chimera (also spelled chimaera) (from the creature Chimera in Greek mythology) is a single organism composed of genetically distinct cells. This can result in male and female organs, two blood types, or subtle variations in form.[1] Animal chimeras are produced by the merger of multiple fertilized eggs. In plant chimeras, however, the distinct types of tissue may originate from the same zygote, and the difference is often due to mutation during ordinary cell division. Normally, chimerism is not visible on casual inspection; however, it has been detected in the course of proving parentage.[2]

Imagine the uncomfortable questions that were asked until they figured out he really was the father.

Prepare to have your mind blown. This is the fascinating case study of a man who failed a paternity test because part of his genome actually belongs to his unborn twin. This means that the genetic father of the child is actually the man in question’s brother, who never made it past a few cells in the womb.

Yes, this sounds completely crazy and like a headline you might read in a trashy magazine. But before you write it off as that, let’s go into some more details.

It all starts off with a couple in the U.S. who were having trouble conceiving their second child. They decided to seek help and went to a fertility clinic, where eventually intrauterine insemination was performed. ......

........“Both parents are A, but the child is AB,” Barry Starr from the Department of Genetics at Stanford University told IFLScience. “There are rare cases where that can happen, but their first thought was that the clinic had mixed up sperm samples.”

The couple therefore decided to take a standard paternity test, which to their dismay revealed that the man was not the child’s father. So they took another test, but the results were the same. ..........

.......This was when Starr was contacted by the couple’s lawyer, who suggested that they take a more powerful test: the over-the-counter 23andMe genetic service. This was because this particular test is good at looking at family relationships. The results that came back were pretty surprising, suggesting that the child’s father was actually his uncle, the man’s brother.

But now that they have all that figured out, besides uncomfortable questions around fathers day, i hope they live happily genetically ever after.

Clickbait headline, but interesting phenomenon nonetheless (Recombinant DNA).

It even happened to a mother who failed a paternity test for her own child during a court battle. Nearly lost the child until the condition was discovered.

a reply to: GetHyped

i dont make the headlines, only postem.

its bad enough when theres doubts of paternity, but maternity? thats silly

sorry no reply.

It's not the OP's headline, it's the headline of the article linked to.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

I didn't say it was OP's headline.

I'm the son of a sea cook.

a reply to: dashen

The headline is actually correct in even the very literal sense.



_javascript:hyperlink()Chimera

Literally, it was this guy's unborn twin. And the more we study this weird phenomenon, the more we find out....it is waaaaaaaaaaay more common in people than we realized. Twins are conceived at a surprising high rate in humans, but also end up having lower viability in at least one of the twins, causing it to die often before it even makes it to fetal stage, so live twin births tend to be much less common than conceptions. With that it mind, when you consider 1 out of every 8 conceptions are believed to start as twins, meaning there is a chance that one out of every 8 of us had a sibling that never was. And that means there is a good number of those who "devoured" our weaker twin, fusing their DNA with ours. (For obvious reasons, this would happen with fraternal, rather than identical, twins).

With this in mind, we really need to change our DNA testing methods in everything from paternity tests to criminal forensics, because now we know that our current single source methods of DNA testing have an unacceptable high chance of false results, which can potentially ruin lives. It can let a guilty individual to continue to commit crime sprees, or destroy a family by falsely implicating infidelity when in fact none occurred, due to the father having two completely different genetic codes in his body. It also has strong implications in the medical field as far as inherited conditions and such.

I think in the future, all DNA testing should be taken from at least two different sources from the person. Like, saliva, skin, blood, and semen from males. Ova would be more difficult for women, however, and there have been cases of "chimera mommies" whose ovaries were a different DNA structure to that of her blood.

This opens up a whole new load of possibilities of discovering certain mysteries of life.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: MotherMayEye

I didn't say it was OP's headline.

You weren't the only one who said something (even though the other comment has been edited now.)

originally posted by: Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
a reply to: dashen

The headline is actually correct in even the very literal sense.

Except it's not:

This means that the genetic father of the child is actually the man in question’s brother, who never made it past a few cells in the womb.

Biological father:

a parent who has conceived (biological mother) or sired (biological father) rather than adopted a child and whose genes are therefore transmitted to the child.

dictionary.reference.com...

It's an interesting (and rare) case to be discussed but let's move past the article's clickbait headline.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a parent who has conceived (biological mother) or sired (biological father) rather than adopted a child and whose genes are therefore transmitted to the child.

Ah, but they aren't his genes. They were his twin's.

A gene is a locus (or region) of DNA that encodes a functional RNA or protein product, and is the molecular unit of heredity.

The headline isn't that misleading. I was interested, anyway, having lost my son's twin at nine weeks.

a reply to: dashen


Ummm...perhaps that's why certain individuals hear voices...or have multiple personality traits...perhaps twin or multiple consciousnesses are fused into the remaining sibling as well as genetic material/organs...etc...

Now that my mind went there...I wonder if proportions of institutionalized populations are merely suffering the effects of multiple sibling absorption/fusing...and/or if there have been any correlating studies regarding such...

Sad that if such is the case...psychiatry tries to cure such with medications...

I also have an slight issue with calling the fused/absorbed twin unborn...obviously it was birthed...just not as a separate and distinct organism...(I fully understand that comes from the thread title and from the article author)


Remember...you heard it first here On ATS from me...so I get the credit for having an original thought...muahaha...






YouSir

a reply to: YouSir

It could really open up some incredible new dilemas. Like, who are we, really? What defines an individual?

A person's DNA is completely unique to that one person. So when you have two people literally fused into one (Siamese twins do not count, as that is a totally different ball game), where does one end and the other begin? Our gametes, our sex cells, pass on these unique fingerprints in new ways. But what happens when the DNA code that created and exists in the cells of your brain, your hearts, your lungs, ect, is not the same one that exists in your sperm or eggs, the cells in your body from which your progeny will come from? Even more so, what if we find out that our brain parts could come from two different sources? I mean, when a chimera is formed in the womb, exactly what cells determining what body parts get absorbed into the surviving twin?

Who are we, really?

a reply to: GetHyped

Clickbait headline, but interesting phenomenon nonetheless (Recombinant DNA).

Not recombinant DNA. Recombinant DNA is the result of combining sequences of DNA from multiple sources into a single recombinant molecule. Though the organism that results is sometimes referred as a chimera, this is a wholly different thing than tetragametic chimerism where there is the successful fertilization of two ovum by two sperm (four gametes, hence tetragametic) and then at some point in the blastocyst or zygote stage, the cells from what otherwise would have been fraternal twins merge.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

The "twin" was nothing more than a bunch of cells. You can't biologically be a father when you don't exist.

a reply to: GetHyped

if they freeze your gametes and the father gets vaporized those cells will still father a baby.

a reply to: dashen

Cells don't impregnate people. Humans do.

biological parent

1. A child's natural parent, either the male who supplied the sperm or the female who supplied the egg which interacted for the child's conception.

en.wiktionary.org...

The person was the biological father.

a reply to: GetHyped

well thats the question isnt it?
is the father Bob, or rather who is Bob?
his genetic information or his physical existence?

a reply to: dashen

Considering the twin's sole existence consisted of a clump of cells in the womb, it's not exactly a dichotomy considering "biological father" has a specific definition.

What are you going to do, sue some of the guy's cells for child support?

a reply to: GetHyped

or sue a vaporized sperm donor?