Scientists have created mice with two biologically male parents for the first time - a significant milestone in reproductive biology.
The team, led by Katsuhiko Hayashi, a professor of genome biology at Osaka University in Japan, generated eggs from the skin cells of male mice that, when implanted in female mice, went on to produce healthy pups, according to research published March 15 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
This process of genetic engineering, which introduces specific genes to create cells that mimic embryonic stem cells, was pioneered by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Shinya Yamanaka. "This study is particularly neat because it takes advantage of errors that are known to occur during culture of XY cells, which lead to loss of the Y chromosome and subsequent gain of a second X chromosome, resulting in XX cells that are capable of generating live offspring," said Rod Mitchell, a professor of developmental endocrinology at the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in a statement. He wasn't involved in the research.
"It difficult to produce babies from male-male couples because of both technical and ethical reasons," Hayashi said. "But it is theoretically possible to produce babies from male-male couples, as shown in this study."
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