In a unique twist of conception, a couple in Washington have found their son was conceived using the genes of the dad’s lost twin.
The discovery was found when a 34-year-old man and his wife went to a fertility clinic to have their son. When their child’s blood type was found to be different from his parents, the father had a paternity test which revealed he wasn’t the father of his child.
The 34-year-old man and his wife from Washington, who wish to remain anonymous, had a son through the help of a fertility clinic in 2014
When they discovered that the child had a blood type different from his parents, the father underwent a paternity test, which he failed.
The couple sought legal advice as they believed the fertility clinic was to blame for the mix up.
Dr Barry Starr, a geneticist from Stanford University told Buzzfeed,’You can imagine the parents were pretty upset. They thought the clinic had used the wrong sperm.’
After engaging with their lawyer, the father took another test, using his saliva, which also failed.
When they confronted the fertility clinic, they were assured there was no mistake and that the father had to be the paternal parent to their child. He was the only caucasian man to submit a sample on the day.
The confused couple approached Dr Barry who suggested they organise a genetic ancestry test to see if this would give any answers.
The results came back as shock to the parents. The father was the boy’s uncle.
Dr Barry admitted, ‘That was kind of a eureka moment. Chimera reports are very rare but they are real.’
The diagnosis came back that the DNA in the father’s saliva differed from the DNA in his sperm which allowed him to father his own nephew. When the father was conceived, he inherited the data of his twin brother in the womb. It was his twin brother’s DNA that conceived the child and this explained why the child had a different blood type to his father.
This isn’t the first time a chimera case has been reported. There have been previous examples of women failing a maternity test for their children as a result of chimeric genes.
One example was Karen Keegan of Boston, who discovered in 2002 that she wasn’t the mother of her children when she was tested for compatibility when she needed a kidney transplant.
Her body had absorbed the genes of her twin when in the womb and the true genetic mother was in fact her twin.
