Personal Health

A boy and a girl, but in identical twins: Two babies and their crazy history

A mother from Brisbane, Australia, brought an extremely rare set of twins to the world: the boy and the girl are “semi-identical” twins. This means that you have the same maternal DNA, but share only a certain percentage of the paternal genome. When the babies are in the world, is the second pair of twins, in which this peculiarity is noticed, report Doctors in the “New England Journal of Medicine”.

Professor Nicholas Fisk took care of the mother and the two children that came in 2014 in the “Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital” to the world. The mother was at the time of birth is 28 years old. It was their first pregnancy. The children had been begotten in a natural way.

Special Twins

“The ultrasound after six weeks revealed a single placenta and the fruit bubbles were positioned in such a way that everything pointed to identical twins,” quoted the “BBC” Fisk. The Surprise was followed by eight weeks later, A further ultrasound examination revealed that the children were both male and female – what is identical twins possible.

Identical twins occur when an ovum by a sperm is fertilized and subsequently divides. Gender, results in two same-children with the same genetic make-up. Identical twins usually be confusingly similar.

Fraternal twins arise when two eggs by two different sperm to be fertilized. There are two children, not necessarily of the same sex. Strictly fraternal twins, ordinary siblings, which grow at the same time in the belly of the mother are taken.

Just another case known

In the case of the pair of twins from Australia, it is a mixed form of these two variants: A single Egg appears to have been fertilized simultaneously by two sperm, and shared. Two children born with the same genetic makeup of the mother and of different sexes. The sex of the child is determined by the sperm of the father.

“We know that this is an exceptional case,” says Fisk. An analysis in the global databases have, however, lead to another well-known pair of twins with the same history: The children live in the USA and in 2007 were to the world. The identity of the Australian twins and their parents was not disclosed.

Sources: New England Journal of Medicine / BBC