What is a chimera??

Question

Are they two people in one?

Do they have extra genes? Are they smarter or more talented?

Answer 1

A chimera is a mythical creature.  It is also a human-engineered or in vivo mutated protein that is encoded by a nucleotide sequence made by a splicing together of two or more complete or partial genes or cDNA.

Answer 2

In medical science, a chimera is an individual having more than one genetically-distinct population of cells that originated from more than one zygote.

In medicine, a person composed of two genetically distinct types of cells. Human chimeras were first discovered with the advent of blood typing when it was found that some people had more than one blood type. Most of them proved to be "blood chimeras" -- non-identical twins who shared a blood supply in the uterus. Those who were not twins are thought to have blood cells from a twin that died early in gestation. Twin embryos often share a blood supply in the placenta, allowing blood stem cells to pass from one and settle in the bone marrow of the other. About 8% of non-identical twin pairs are chimeras.