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Dear Professor,
The reader of your Journal very often reads the term "chimera"
in texts related to for example to leukemia, just as in the previous
issue of your journal was the article with title "Anti-CD20
chimera monoclonal antibody in therapeutic practice"[1]. And
everyone wanders why researchers have established this term.
Chimera in Greek Mythology[2] was a multiform monster. Homer[3]
in the Iliad mentions for the first time Chimera, which was a fire-breathing
monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail
of a serpent. According to Hesiod[4] Chimera was a child of Typhon
and Echidnas, who was half woman and half serpent and her brothers
were Lernaia Hydra, Orthos, the dog-monster with two heads and a
tail of a serpent, and Kerberos, the keeper of the underworld with
the fifty heads and the tails of serpents. Chimera's children were
the Lion of Nemea and Sphinx, who was Thebas' catastrophe for all
those, who were able to answer her enigma but which was answered
as it is known by Oedipus. Chimera was brought up in Lycia of Minor
Asia and was killed by the hero Bellerophon mounted on the winged
horse Pegasus, as he was set on fighting with Chimera by the King
of Lycias hoping for his destruction.
Scientists got from Greek Mythology the term "chimera"
in order to characterize the plant, which derived after inoculation
and presents mixed characteristics from its mother plant and its
graft and generally for other organisms, whose tissue belong to
two different genetic types. Similarly the term "chimera"
is used on transplantation of bone marrow so as to signify that
in the blood of the body, which accepted the graft, two different
cellular population were found, that of which one being the donor
and the other the receiver.
Also the term "chimeric" as an adjective means that
the subject to which is referred, is a creation of two different
biological types, as in the mentioned article of the journal, where
it is inscribed that rifuximampe is a "chimeric monoclonic
antibody", which is formed from "the stable part of human's
immunoglobulin" and "the variable part of mouse’s immonoglobulin",
i.e. by immunoglobulins from two different kinds.
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[1] Ann Clin Paediatr 2004, 51 (4), 347-353.
[2] Greek Mythology, Ed. J. Kakridis, Ekdotiki Athinon, Athens
1986, vol. 1, p. 84-85, vol. 2, p. 48.
[3] Homer, Iliad Z 119-183
[4] Hesiod, Theogonia 3-5-330, 820-880, Pindar, Pytdia I, 15-29.
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