#microchimera

[crow-of-ohio]

Found a cool species called Microchimera and like all things I love these days I've made it Half Life. So this is my beautiful baby Atmos (yes like the strata au) who popped fully formed into existence in Kleiner's office and got adopted. And then the rescas happened and it was in the Citadel's computers and Breen fucked it up real bad :/

Its main species at birth are damselfly, fennec fox, and burrowing owl, but after it spends two decades or so jumping between Combine tech to stay safe from all the aliens and monsters and zombies it's been polluted by different Synth features :(

Species creator is @micromera! Pleaseeeee go check microchimera out they're one of my new favorite things

Btw I draw way too fuckin tiny and I had to break out this brush to paint on some of the finer details. And it sucked and my hand hurts but I'm so happy with how that specific drawing came out

[micromera]

Releasing my very first furry original species

Digiparus Chimeridae

or, the Microchimera!

Ref Sheet 1.0 This is the 'species' that my fursona, imp is.

The one pictured in the species information breakdowns name is Rift!

I've never been the charge of an original species before so I'm excited to see where they go.

MICROCHIMERA ARE AN OPEN SPECIES!

[bonefall]

i dont think people are upset that the erins "weren't creative" enough with Moonpaw, they're upset that she's just. not a chimera. thats just a longhaired tortie and they justified it with chimerism. which is extremely insensitive because chimerism is a real medical thing that can cause issues in every species, including humans for those that dont know, and thats like. a big thing.

like, yay some disability rep (depending on how they write it. it wont be good. ughh) but like. its not going to be considered a disability when it can be in some cases. they are just going to say "ohh shes so special!!" like some people say with autism in this age (the infantilization of it) and its gonna be. weirdddd

anyways. sorry for ranting in your inbox.

Hey. Woah. THIS is insensitive and I don't know where you're getting this from. NONE of the three types of natural chimerism are a disability and it is extremely rare that fusion chimerism leads to medical complications.

Do not spread misinformation about a genetic condition because you're annoyed about the writing team confusing a common tortie fur pattern with chimerism. THEIR mistake is ultimately harmless. What YOU'RE doing is stigmatizing.

Quite frankly, after seeing a bunch of posts and receiving several asks about this, I don't think half of the people who are getting mad actually know anything about chimeras. I sure as fuck hope it's just ignorance, and that you aren't out here trying to call the state of being intersex a disability.

But I can fix ignorance. No need to assume malice. I will explain what chimerism is, and why you should stop going around implying it "causes issues in every species."

Chimerism is when a single individual is comprised of cells from two or more fully fertilized zygotes. There are two BROAD types of chimerism;

Artifical

Natural

Artifical chimeras are common with the advent of modern medicine. Ever had a blood transfusion? Organ transplant? You are a chimera. Or at least were for a while.

THIS can lead to complications and can cause disability, but it's not what Moonpaw is. She would be a type of natural chimera, which in and of itself has THREE subtypes;

Micro chimerism

Blood chimerism

Fusion chimerism

Microchimerism is so common that I could make a Your Mom joke out of it. It's caused by the passage of cells between the fetus and placenta during pregnancy. Everyone who has ever been pregnant is a microchimera.

While it can lead to complications, it can also be beneficial. Pregnancy could be considered a type of temporary disability, but no one would expect disability rep from every character who had ever given birth.

Blood chimeras are common in species whose twins typically share a placenta, such as cows and marmosets, but very rare in animals like humans and cats which usually don't. It occurs when tissue between two twins is exchanged through the umbilical chord. This type of chimera often ends up with a mixed bloodtype, hence the name.

This is the cause of freemartinism in cattle, when fraternal cow twins cause a sister to share her brother's hormones and act more like a bull. A type of intersex condition, not a disability-- so I sure HOPE you aren't trying to imply THIS should be "disability rep."

And even in the other case, would you automatically expect disability rep from a character that has two blood types?? No. Just like you wouldn't automatically expect disability rep from every character that had ever been pregnant, or every character who had ever needed a blood transfusion

And lastly, the one that Moonpaw ACTUALLY is. A fusion chimera. These are created when two fully fertilized zygotes fuse into a single individual.

These are extremely rare because you can't usually TELL when an individual is a chimera. There is no obvious physical difference between the "halves," with some cases of doctors insisting that patches are just weird birthmarks. They live their entire lives with normal health problems like non-chimeras. It mostly causes complications when DNA testing results in a false negative-- because the offspring of a fusion chimera occasionally end up being their genetic nespring.

Or, the two "halves" are male and female, causing gonadal differences. These people aren't disabled, there's nothing wrong with their bodies, but they're subjected to unneccesary cosmetic surgeries as children because they are intersex.

Say it. SAY IT. INTERSEX. I N T E R S E X. IM GRABBING YOU BY THE SHIRT AND SHAKING YOU THEY ARE INTERSEX.

Can some intersex conditions cause disabilities? YES. Are intersex conditions inherently disabilities? NO. Even when you're discussing infertility as a disability, tread VERY CAREFULLY because intersex people are fighting very hard to lift the stigma over their bodies.

Speak with care. Do not equate being intersex with being disabled. They are two different things.

You can be both and sometimes one could contribute to the other, but BEING intersex IS NOT a disability.

VERY rarely, even MORE rare than standard chimeras which are already very very rare and massively underreported because they are so unremarkable, a fusion chimera will happen LATE in utero. THIS can contribute to a chronic autoimmune condition where the cells reject each other, which is a disability.

And by rare I mean one case. Literally one. Of the 50 reported fusion chimeras in the review I'm referencing, Taylor Muhl was the only one with this. 4 were discovered via congenital abnormalities (unknown if connected to the chimerism b/c they were only tested because something was already wrong), 17 had fertility issues, and the remaining 28 didn't report immune conditions or birth defects but INTERSEXUALITY.

ANOTHER condition is often lumped in with chimerism, by people who do not know what chimerism is, which is mosaicism. Mosaicism, when there are two different sets of genes resulting from the same zygote, is NOT chimerism. MOSAICISM can be a cause of disability. CHIMERISM is usually not.

(Read the review in depth, as it includes mosaic cases for the sake of completion.)

They can both be fertilization errors, but are not the same thing. Follow me, I'm only going to woefully simplify a complicated topic once,

CHIMERA = Two zygotes in one body

MOSAIC = Two bodies in one zygote

CHIMERA = usually fine

MOSAIC = usually bad

And the last possible places you could be getting the idea that chimerism "causes disability" from, to my knowledge, is 1. This study that says the loss of a twin in early pregnancy increases the chance of congenital defects in the survivors (has barely anything to do with chimerism, this link is tangential, vanishing twin syndrome does not necessarily mean it was absorbed by its sibling)

Or, 2, this study of several animals where they correlated rates of benign tumors to % of chimerism based on SPECIES. BLOOD chimeras. It's COWS AND MARMOSETS AGAIN. The study ITSELF calls for further targeted research of chimerism cause of susceptibility to cancer.

It couldn't even link new growths or malignant tumors to chimerism in the mammals of its study. WE'RE mammals.

Correlation does not equal causation. Statistics 101.

So no. That's not "a big thing." Chimerism is fine, they're just very likely to be intersex if they're a fusion chimera of a male and a female zygote. Do not imply intersexuality is a disability. Please get mad about the actual ableism in the series, not the team being clueless about tortie patterns.

Also everyone say you're sorry to intersex Moonpaw. I better see you people making intersex Moonpaw pride flag edits as penance IMMEDIATELY.

UPDATE: Anon apologized! Growth! I still think this is an important post, especially in the context of the wider fandom conversation, so I'm leaving it as-is. Please feel free to reblog.

UPDATE 2: Clarification on infertility as a disability because I didn't word myself very well in one section!

[cellularfilm]

women carry at least three unique cell populations in their bodies – their own, their mother’s, and their child’s – creating what biologists term a microchimera

Researchers realised in the 1990s that it also occurs during organ transplantation, where the genetic match between donor and recipient determines whether the body accepts or rejects the grafted tissue, or if it triggers disease.

The Western self is a bounded, autonomous entity, defined in no small part by its presumed distinction from the other. But this unfolding field of research, advanced by Nelson and others, suggests that we humans are not oppositional but constituent beings, made of many. Nelson, who is fond of referencing the poet Walt Whitman’s multitudes, says we need a ‘new paradigm of the biological self’.

The self emerging from microchimeric research appears to be of a different order: porous, unbounded, rendered constituently. Nelson suggests that each human being is not so much an isolated island as a dynamic ecosystem. And if this is the case, the question follows as to how this state of collectivity changes our conscious and unconscious motivations. If I am both my children and my mother, if I carry traces of my sibling and remnants of pregnancies that never resulted in birth, does that change who I am and the way I behave in the world? If we are to take to heart Whitman’s multitudes, we encounter an I composed of shared identity, collective affiliations and motivations that emerge not from a mean and solitary struggle, but a group investment in greater survival.

[thepoliticsofparenting-blog]

“During pregnancy, cells from the fetus cross the placenta and enter the mother's body, where they can become part of her tissues.

“This cellular invasion means that mothers carry unique genetic material from their children’s bodies, creating what biologists call a microchimera, named after the legendary beasts made of different animals. The phenomenon is widespread among mammals, and scientists have proposed a number of theories for how it affects the mother, from better wound healing to higher risk of cancer.“

[thechillsquid]

CHIMERA IS NOT JUST GENETIC QUIRK THAT GAL DEADASS HAS AT LEAST TWO WHOLE DNA SETS!!! CHIMERAS ARE FUCKING AWESOME AS SHIT THEY ARE NOT JUST A TERM FOR ODD FACIAL SPLITTING OF COLORATION! CHIMERAS ARE WHEREAS A SINGLE ORGANISM HAS TWO DIFFERING SETS OF DNA MOST OFTEN FROM A FUSING OF TWO ZYGOTES!

We now have official information on Moonpaw!

She is a chimera cat with heterochromia and the daughter of Bayshine and Thriftear, named because her face looks like a half moon!

[micromera]

Yippee

Art for my discord/twitch supporters :)

[micromera]

I accidentally made a furry species and a bunch of friends wanted in. :)

Various microchimera commissions

[micromera]

Going to Anthro Northwest this weekend (:

[micromera]

Been playing Breath of the Wild on my twitch :) Imp with the sword

[micromera]

Character commission for daeoluxu on twitch :)

The second microchimera :)

[micromera]

While normally found skulking about busy metropolitan cities, microchimera are fairly proficient in open spaces as well. They are able to climb and hold themselves comfortably using their hind legs and tails for support.