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A Mouse With Two Mothers
jabberjaw writes "Both the BBC and Nature are reporting that scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture have used two sets of chromosomes belonging to a female mouse to create what are essentially fatherless mice. The process by which this was accomplished (parthenogenesis) does not naturally occur in mammals. The mouse used lacked a gene known as H19 which in turn activated the Igf2 which allowed this process to occur."
All jokes aside (as I am sure many "two daddy trailerpark" jokes are immanent) but this is indeed quite an advancement in biotech, because we may see future developments arrive in the development of cloning endangered species back from the brink of extinction; now species threatened from a lack of suitable mates, could be quite possibly saved, with the proper funding. The hard part would be digging deeper gene pools, enabling a true future for endangered species (although, I guess that's next week on /., right CmdrTaco?). Also, I wonder if it's possible to grow offspring with only two male subjects.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
is it still considered a bastard?
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Who's your daddy???
So does this mean we men have no use anymore?
Damn you, Freud!
The phenomenon of parthenogenesis was discovered in the 18th cent. by Charles Bonnet. In 1900, Jacques Loeb accomplished the first clear case of artificial parthenogenesis when he pricked unfertilized frog eggs with a needle and found that in some cases normal embryonic development ensued
Artificial parthenogenesis has since been achieved in almost all major groups of animals, although it usually results in incomplete and abnormal development
The phenomenon is rarer among plants (where it is called parthenocarpy) than among animals
Doubt it. The Y chromosome is a mutation of the X chromosome and contains much less information. But let's see how this mouse goes. I've my suspicions that in addition to grand pronouncements we'll invent a host of new varients of immune deficencie and progeria like disorders before we've got the kinks more or less understood, let alone under control.
So as much as I'm looking forward to an all lesbian (but bi curious) amazon go-go dancer future where I'm the last man standing; this research and my time machine seem about equally incomplete. All for one and snu-snu for all.
Parthenogenesis (straight from the Wikipedia Link): Parthenogenesis (Greek , "virgin", + , "birth") means the growth and development of an embryo or seed without fertilization by a male. In other words, an embryo/seed develops without receiving a second set of chromosomes from a 'father'. It doesn't matter if that second set came from a female or a male. When NPR covered this story, one of the scientists interviewed actually SAID this was different from parthenogensis, which had been demonstrated previously in many species.
Well, if you believe that baby Jesus was born of a virgin, then you quite likely also believe that he is/was the son of God - divine intervention.
Divine intervention is not natural.
Hence baby Jesus is not proof that it does occur naturally.
If it did occur naturally, baby Jesus' birth would not be a miracle, which would tend to discredit the claim he is the son of God.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
But I would have thought that it also removed the possibility of men being produced by this method... I'm not a biology nerd, so I might be completely wrong, but I just can't see where the 'Y' chromasome would come from in order to be able to make a boy!
Some called Tony Hawk doing the 900 a miracle.
But then again, Tony's 900, as spectacular as it was, didn't fit over 100 pieces of specific predictive prophecy from several hundreds of years of writing, most several hundreds of years prior to the event. And, Tony's 900 didn't quite heal hundreds or feed thousands and deliver moral teachings or resurrect after a decent Roman crucifixion.
But then again, there are those who think that the sun rising every morning is the result of an image broadcast into their brain by evil goverrnment agents while their bodies are actually asleep on the slab in the lab. They'll say that Tony's 900 will have sufficient artificial prophecy written about it in the near future to make it seem as if it was a predicted event, and they'll say that's it's just a matter of time before there's a Church of the Tony Hawk 900.
You know, some people believe some whacky things.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
I AM a scientist, and I read the research paper in Nature rather than the popular-press rehashings of the article. Of the 371 embryos that were transferred to recipients there were 8 born live and 2 who survived the perinatal period. That should stop the handwaving about the likelihood of producing humans infants using ths approach on the grounds of cost alone.
An extensive amount of genetic engineering was done in order to produce parthenotes that were capable of surviving past 10d of gestation, which is when naturally-occuring parthenotes usually die. One of the two survivors was raised by a foster mother to adulthood and has herself produced a litter of apparently normal pups. The other survivor was sacrificed for gene expression profile studies.
Some whack job might indeed try this on humans, but it is unlikely. It is easy to obtain enough mice recipients for 371 embryos. It will be significantly more challenging to do that for humans. We also do not know what regulatory differences there may be between mice and humans that would prevent the reported protocol from producing viable embryos in vitro.