Here's the story.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20620127-5007200,00.html
Elissa Lawrence
October 22, 2006 12:00am
BEAUTIFUL baby twins Alicia and Jasmin Singerl certainly make people look twice.
Alicia has dark brown eyes and complexion, while Jasmin is blue-eyed and fair-skinned.
Experts say the chance of twins being born with such different physical characteristics is about a million to one.
Conceived naturally, the sisters from Burpengary, north of Brisbane, were born at Caboolture Hospital in May.
Mum Natasha Knight, 35, is of Jamaican-English heritage, while their father Michael Singerl, 34, was born in Germany. The couple, who are engaged, also have five-year-old daughter Taylah, who is blue-eyed with blonde hair and a light olive complexion.
Ms Knight said she was shocked when she saw how different her daughters were.
"It's just amazing, they are so different," she said. "When they were born you could see there was a colour difference straight away. We couldn't believe it.
"Alicia's eyes were brown and her hair was dark. Jasmin's eyes were blue and her hair was white – you could hardly see her hair or her eyebrows.
"We were joking when I was pregnant about what if one baby looked like me and one looked like Michael. We joked about one light one, one dark one, so it was amazing when it actually happened.
"When we go out people stop and ask if they are twins. Other people will look but not say anything. Maybe they think I am babysitting one of them.
"Someone even asked me if I was sure there wasn't a mix-up at the hospital. But there was no mix-up – they are my girls and they are both so beautiful.
"It will be interesting when they go to school, and they will probably wonder why they look so different from each other. I guess the easiest way to explain it will be to say one took after Mum, one took after Dad."
Genetics experts say that in most cases a mixed-race woman's eggs will be a mixture of genes for both black and white skin.
However, much more rarely, the eggs may contain genes for predominantly one skin colour.
In this case, Ms Knight has released two such eggs – one with predominantly dark pigmentation genes and one with predominantly fair genes.
Non-identical twins are conceived when two eggs are fertilised by two sperm at the same time, which has odds in itself of about 100-1.
Clinical geneticist Dr Stephen Withers said the likelihood of a mixed-race woman having eggs that were predominantly for one skin colour was rare enough, let alone releasing two of them simultaneously and producing twins.
"It's probably a million to one," he said. "It's a terrifically rare phenomenon . . . extraordinarily rare.
"There's two parts of this that are very rare – just having those extremes of eggs, and also releasing them simultaneously."
A similar set of twin girls was born in Britain last year.
Remee, blonde and fair-skinned, and Kian Horder, who has dark skin, were born to parents both of mixed race.
