We're All Mutant X-Men

Wolverine’s not so different from you and me: Scientists have found that each person has as many as 60 mutations in our genomes—portions of our DNA that aren’t matched in either of our parents. Mutations happen in both eggs and sperm cells, and neither cell’s mutations are consistently dominant in the resulting human. Scientists studied two families, each with one child, searching through 6,000 potential mutations for each child's genome.

In one child, 92% of his mutations were from his father, while only 36% of the other kid’s mutations came from his dad, the Daily Mail reports. “This is a surprise: many people expected that in all families most mutations would come from the father, due to the additional number of times that the genome needs to be copied to make a sperm, as opposed to an egg,” says a researcher. (More X-Men stories.)