- Eggs can be tricked into developing into an embryo without fertilisation
- But the embryos, called parthenogenotes, always died after a few days
- Now scientists have a way to inject these with sperm, resulting in births
- Could allow women whose fertility has been affected to have childre
Scientists have defied nature in an experiment which could one day make it possible for men to have babies with each other.
The study shows that sperm and skin cells - or any other kind of non-egg cell - might be all you need for conception.
Scientists admitted the scenario of men conceiving was 'speculative and fanciful', but did not rule it out in principle.
The injection of sperm into a parthenogenote mouse embryo, pictured. If injecting sperm into a mammalian parthenogenote can produce offspring, theoretically at least it should be possible to achieve the same result using mitotic cells not derived from eggs
Eggs can be tricked into developing into an embryo without fertilisation, but the embryos, called parthenogenotes, die after a few days.
Scientists at Bath have developed a method of injecting mouse parthenogenotes with sperm so they can go on in many cases to become healthy pups.
'This is first time that full term development has been achieved by injecting sperm into embryos,' said lead scientist Dr Tony Perry, a molecular embryologist from the University of Bath.
'It had been thought that only an egg cell was capable of reprogramming sperm to allow embryonic development to take place.'
Working with mice, the team produced healthy offspring while bypassing the normal process of fertilising an egg cell with sperm.
Although the embryos in the experiment started out as egg cells, the experiment raises the prospect that one day they could do the same with adult cells.
Source: dailymail
