A
man has recently received the shocker of his life after he learned that
the 'father' of his newborn baby is not him but his unborn twin brother.
Scientists working with DNA samples
A 34-year-old man was recently told these words: "Sorry sir, you're
not the father of your newborn child—your unborn brother is" in what is
definitely the worst nightmare for any man.
The whole thing 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 than his parents.
Concerned, the husband took an at-home paternity test and learned that his DNA didn't match the son's. As expected, the parents were pretty upset. They thought the clinic had used the wrong sperm, however, the clinic assured them there was no mixup.
On the advice of Stanford University geneticist Barry Starr, the father and son took DNA ancestry tests and learned that genetically the dad was his son's uncle. 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.
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 percent.
Acording to The Independent, this is the only known case of a paternity test being tricked by a so-called "human chimera."
Human chimerism isn't new, though: It's been seen on TV shows like CSI and in real-life cases, like a mom who took a DNA test for a kidney transplant and learned she wasn't the biological mother of two of her sons, or another woman who got similar news after submitting a DNA sample for welfare payments, the Daily Beast reports.
"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.)
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