Yesterday I was watching CSI, and they had an interesting episode as usual (I love the GC work), anyways, the criminal at the end was what they identified as a chimaera.



Chimaera, comes from an ancient Greek myth. I will not post on that, you can read about it by clicking on the word. However, as I said at the beginning, the criminal was a chimaera, two persons in one. It is not the same as having double personality, but rather, you are one person, but have two sets of DNA! How you ask? Well simple.

Some people's blood contains cells from a sibling. Others are two individuals rolled into one. Yet more carry a distinct mutation in only parts of their bodies. So in the episode, the guy's sperm DNA was different than the blood DNA, so they have difficulties catching him, until Grissom took photos of his back by chance, and he saw the distinct marks of a chimaera. This is also called mosaicism



As you can see this is a very fascinating subject, never knew about it before. To think that some people have two sets of DNA in one body!! Now that is something, right?

You can do your own research and find out more if you want on this subject, but remember this, next time you are around someone, do not be surprised if he is two people in one!!