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Scientists have created fertile mice from male genetic material alone, a breakthrough that could one day open the door to human babies who inherit their genes from two fathers.
The experiment, led by Professor Yanchang Wei at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, marks a milestone in the quest to overcome the biological barriers to same-sex reproduction.
The research, published in the journal PNAS, involved inserting DNA from two sperm cells into an egg that had been emptied of its nucleus. This resulted in an androgenetic embryo — one that contains only male genetic material — which was then implanted into the uterus of a surrogate mother mouse.
In mammals androgenetic embryos typically fail early in development due to a phenomenon known as genomic imprinting. Roughly speaking, this refers to how certain genes are turned on or off depending on whether they came from the mother or father, via chemical modifications or “epigenetic tags” that are attached to their DNA.
Wei and his colleagues overcame this by using an editing technique to “reprogramme” seven regions of the DNA of...