Chimera

Chimera

These are produced by grafting different parents, different cultivars or different species (which may belong to different genera). The tissues may be partially fused together following grafting to form a single growing organism that preserves both types of tissue in a single shoot. Just as the constituent species are likely to differ in a wide range of features, so the behavior of their chimera is like to be highly variable. In horticulture, a graft-chimaera may arise in grafting at the point of contact between rootstock and stem and will have properties intermediate between those of its “parents”. A graft-chimaera is not a true hybrid but a mixture of cells, each with the genotype of one of its “parents”: it is a chimaera. Propagation is by cloning only. In practice graft-chimaeras are not noted for their stability and may easily revert to one of the “parents”. Chimeras can also be produced in animals.

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