Sunshine & Selfies in the Park / Chimera

Yesterday afternoon was so beautiful, I couldn't miss the opportunity to take some photos. Unfortunately, I spent the whole day all alone and had no one to take photos of me. So I ventured out into a public park with my bike, camera, tripod and self-timer and tried to ignore/avoid making contact with all the dog-walkers and teenagers who wandered by my little shoot. Pretty scary stuff if you're a little bit shy and self-conscious when it comes to strangers. But it was well worth the mild embarrassment because I got some really nice photos out of it (seriously, my new EOS 60Dwith thislens is soooooooooooo good. I can't recommend it enough). dress - Thrifted hat - Hat Stall in Japan shoes - Asos necklace - Claire's (Japan) tights - c/o Oasap A reader brought up genetic chimeras the other day, something that I find really fascinating, so I'm going to talk about that today! So, the DNA in each and every one of your cells is totally identical (apart from germ cells - that's sperm and egg cells). What makes a brain cell different to a skin cell is the genes that cell chooses to express and the proteins they subsequently make. However, if you're a chimera, it means that you have parts of you which are technically from a different being - so a certain organ, or your arms, or some of your blood cells have different DNA in them to the rest of your body. A way in which a chimera can form is when fertilisation occurs between two separate sperm and two separate eggs. This would normally lead to dizygotic (non-identical) twins, but sometimes the two can fuse together. So basically, chimeras are formed when one twin EATS the other twin (in a way. Kind of not really. It just sounded dramatic). Then, as the organism develops into a fish, cat or even a human, different parts of them are technically formed from two different people. (Image source) Yes, you heard me right, it does happen in humans, and has often only been discovered when a genetic test is done between a mother and child, who that mother knows she has given birth to, but the DNA says that it's not her own child - leading to a whole bunch of fun lawsuits (read more here!) Chimeras often wouldn't show such distinctive markings as this horse above though - this would only happen if the different sets of DNA are expressed in the skin cells (although it does happen!) Anyway, I hope that you learnt something new today ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr