Thanks to the scientific miracle of stem cell research, researchers have discovered how to create a mouse from two fathers, thus raising the possibility that human women will one day be useless. I keed. I keed.
Not only does this mean gay couples may one day have biological children that are the genetic offspring of both parents but it also could help us to preserve endangered species, improving livestock breeds, and advancing human assisted reproductive technology.
And now for the non-English version of this story:
In the work reported today, the Behringer team manipulated fibroblasts from a male (XY) mouse fetus to produce an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell line. About one percent of iPS cell colonies grown from this XY cell line spontaneously lost the Y chromosome, resulting in XO cells. The XO iPS cells were injected into blastocysts from donor female mice. The treated blastocysts were transplanted into surrogate mothers, which gave birth to female XO/XX chimeras having one X chromosome from the original male mouse fibroblast.
The female chimeras, carrying oocytes derived from the XO cells, were mated with normal male mice. Some of the offspring were male and female mice that had genetic contributions from two fathers.
According to the authors, “Our study exploits iPS cell technologies to combine the alleles from two males to generate male and female progeny, i.e. a new form of mammalian reproduction.”
And in language even I can understand: two daddies.
Related articles
- Viable female and male mice from two fathers (sciencedaily.com)
- Reproductive scientists create mice from 2 fathers (eurekalert.org)
- Mice created from two dads (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)
- Scientists Use Stem Cells To Create Mice With Two Genetic Fathers (popsci.com)
- Look dads – no mum! (blogs.nature.com)
