For the first time, mice with two parents had children, which represents a significant step towards allowing two men to have children with whom they are both genetically related.
Science was a step closer to allowing two men to have their own genetic children, after Two rats with two parents have had children.
Researchers at the Jiao Tong de Shanghai University in China, they achieved the feat of join two sperm in an egg whose core had been removed.
As the study details on Monday in PNASthe team used a method called edition of the epigenoma to reprogram seven places in the sperm DNA, necessary to allow the development of the embryo.
Of the 259 embryos that were transferred to female mice, only two young – both male – survived and grew to adulthood.
The good news is that Both were parents of descendants – that looked normal in terms of size, weight and appearance – After mating with females.
As New Scientist writes, creating mice with two parents turned out to be much harder than creating mice with two mothers. The Birth of the First Fertile Mouse With two mothers, Kaguya, was recorded in 2004.
In 2022, the new study team managed to create mice without a father Similarly, using only the edition of the epigenoma, which does not change the sequence of DNA. This same method was used to create mice without a mother.
The problem of imprinting
The reason why it is such a significant feat to create mammals with two fathers or two mothers are due to a phenomenon called imprintingwhich is related to the fact that most animals have two sets of chromosomes, one inherited from the mother and one of the father.
In Kaguya’s case, the investigators circumvented the problems by eliminating part of a gene to make general genetic activity more normal. But creating mice with two parents requires much more changes.
Earlier this year, another team in China got some mice with two parents to normalize their genetic activity, but these mice were not totally healthy or fertile.
Although the correction of gene activity through genetic modification is useful for studying the imprinting in laboratory animals, this technique would be REPROVABLE IN PEOPLEbecause the effects of genetic changes are not fully understood.
In addition, they warn experts to New Scientist, if human babies are ever created with two parents, they would be technically three parents – This is because the mitochondria in their cells, which contain a small amount of DNA, would come from ovules.
