Critical Thinking Activities - Chapter 51

Question 1. It is possible to intermingle the embryos (at the 8-64 cell stage) of three mice; they cluster and become one mouse (called a "chimera") with different parts showing the features of its six different parents! What does this indicate relative to the independence of one individual cell as the smallest unit of life?

Question 2. In Eastern Europe, a mother with type O blood gave birth to her biological child with type AB blood. Since this appears impossible, a check of her parents revealed that she was a chimera, a fusion of two different sibling embryos that then developed as one individual but with two tissue types. If her husband had type B blood, what are her two tissue types and how does the science of embryology now place a caveat on the mathematical pronouncements of genetics in paternity cases?

Answers are available to instructors in the Instructor's Manual.
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