Findings by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge and two other institutes in the U.S. and Canada revealed each one of us receives up to 60 mutations in our genome from our parents.

It shows that human genomes (our genetic makeup carried on 23 pairs of chromosomes) are mutated in both sperm and egg cells, resulting in changes to our DNA seen in neither parent.

The studies also confounded previous theories over whether most mutations came from the mother or father, with results showing that it varied dramatically in each individual.