It’s not exactly true to say that each of us has our own genome. We have genomes. Some of us, known as chimeras, have genomes from more than one person. The cells of children linger behind in their mothers; in the womb, cells from twins can intermingle. The rest of us non-chimeras can trace our genomes to one origin–the fertilized egg from which we developed. But as the cells in our bodies divided, they sometimes mutated, creating a panoply of genetic variation known as mosaicism.

I wrote about chimeras and mosaics in September in the New York Times. My article was a status report of sorts. Scientists have known about our many genomes for decades. But with the advent of