This photograph supplied by researcher Katsuhiko Hayashi reveals mice derived from stem cells, 4 weeks after their start, in Osaka, Japan in September 2021. In a research revealed Wednesday, March 16, 2023, within the journal Nature, scientists led by Hayashi have created child mice with two fathers for the primary time by turning male mouse stem cells into feminine cells in a lab.
| Photo Credit: AP
For the primary time, scientists have created child mice from two males.
This raises the distant chance of utilizing the identical method for individuals – though consultants warning that only a few mouse embryos developed into reside mouse pups and nobody is aware of whether or not it could work for people.
Still, “It’s a very clever strategy,” said Diana Laird, a stem cell and reproductive expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research. “It’s an important step in both stem cell and reproductive biology.”
Scientists described their work in a research revealed Wednesday within the journal Nature.
First, they took pores and skin cells from the tails of male mice and remodeled them into “induced pluripotent stem cells,” which may turn into many several types of cells or tissues. Then, by way of a course of that concerned rising them and treating them with a drug, they transformed male mouse stem cells into feminine cells and produced practical egg cells. Finally, they fertilized these eggs and implanted the embryos into feminine mice. About 1% of the embryos – 7 out of 630 – grew into reside mouse pups.
The pups appeared to develop usually and have been in a position to grow to be dad and mom themselves within the traditional method, analysis chief Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kyushu University and Osaka University in Japan instructed fellow scientists on the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing final week.
In a commentary revealed alongside the Nature research, Laird and her colleague, Jonathan Bayerl, stated the work “opens up new avenues in reproductive biology and fertility analysis” for animals and people. Down the road, for example, it might be possible to reproduce endangered mammals from a single male.
“And it might even provide a template for enabling more people,” such as male same-sex couples, “to have biological children, while circumventing the ethical and legal issues of donor eggs,” they wrote.
But they raised several cautions. The most notable one? The technique is extremely inefficient. They said it’s unclear why only a tiny fraction of the embryos placed into surrogate mice survived; the reasons could be technical or biological. They also stressed that it’s still too early to know if the protocol would work in human stem cells at all.
Laird also said scientists need to be mindful of the mutations and errors that may be introduced in a culture dish before using stem cells to make eggs.
The research is the latest to test new ways to create mouse embryos in the lab. Last summer, scientists in California and Israel created “synthetic” mouse embryos from stem cells with out a dad’s sperm or a mother’s egg or womb. Those embryos mirrored pure mouse embryos as much as 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the identical constructions, together with one like a beating coronary heart. Scientists stated the feat may ultimately lay the muse for creating artificial human embryos for analysis sooner or later.
