Health Dictionary
Reliable, easy-to-read patient information on common medical conditions — written in plain language, free of jargon, and grounded in current evidence. Browse the most frequent diagnoses, understand what they mean for everyday life, and learn which steps and questions help you have a focused conversation with your doctor.
Chimera
Introduction
Overview
Overview
A chimera virus is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture Center for Veterinary Biologics as a “new hybrid microorganism created by joining nucleic acid fragments from two or more different microorganisms in which each of at least two of the fragments contain essential genes necessary for replication.”[1] The term chimera already referred to an individual organism whose body contained cell populations from different zygotes or an organism that developed from portions of different embryos.
In fiction
In fiction
In Mission: Impossible II, the pharmaceutical corporation BioCyte engineered a chimera virus in order to create a need for the vaccine Bellerophon, which they had also created. The vaccine is only effective within twenty hours of exposure.
In the PlayStation 3 game, Resistance: Fall of Man, the main character fights against Chimera. Chimera are alien-like creatures that infect humans with a type of mutated chimera virus and turn them into more Chimera.