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Human Sperm Produced In the Laboratory

Posted by timothy on from the that's-not-starting-from-scratch dept.

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The BBC is carrying a report from a team of researchers at Newcastle University who claim to have developed a the first 'artificial' human sperm from stem cells. The research, reported in the journal Stem Cells and Development, involved selecting meristematic germ cells from a human embryonic stem cell culture and inducing meiosis, thus producing a haploid gamete. The authors claim that the resulting sperm are fully formed, mature, human sperm cells but the announcement has been greeted with mixed reaction from colleagues who claim the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation."

65 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. I SWEAR by Phizzle · · Score: 4, Funny

    I DIDNT DO IT!

    --
    I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
    1. Re:I SWEAR by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Funny

      I DIDNT DO IT!

      This is Slashdot. That goes without saying.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    2. Re:I SWEAR by Em+Emalb · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm still trying to figure out how they knew I call my bathroom "the Lab"

      --
      Sent from your iPad.
  2. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's the big deal? I generate human sperm at least once a day and I don't even need a laboratory.

    1. Re:So what? by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, Funny

      And you almost generated humor there. If you had a lab maybe you could have actually been funny.

      The big deal though is, I would assume actually several things

      1. It's interesting enough that we can generate them in vitro. How sperm are made is better known than some other cell types, but now even the parts we don't know can be more easily studied, since you can watch it in a microscope easier. Changing conditions to determine what sperm need to develop is also going to be easier in a dish than it would to change conditions in a mouse testicle (I would assume, I've never tried.) For example, some big pharmecutical company could start a high-throughput screen of drugs on the process, they could identify some chemicals which would block the process and maybe make a male birth control pill. Maybe. There are many other applications for the technology too I'd assume.

      2. We're close to curing some types of male sterility. If, say, you had testicular cancer or other... uh... trauma to your testicles that prevented you from generating your own sperm, this is a step toward that. You could take some of your cells (like skin cells), make them pluripotent (like embryonic stem cells), generate sperm from them, and then undergo IVF.

      At least, a millionaire could. If he were willing to sort out the ethics of it for himself. Would be kind of stupid if you ask me, but so are a lot of things people spend their money on.

    2. Re:So what? by LordKaT · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have a lab and he *HATES* it when I try to generate sperm.

    3. Re:So what? by cashman73 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or, 3. if they took stem cells from a lesbian, they could generate some sperm for her, thereby along her to impregnate her other female partner. Next, all they need to do is to generate an egg cell from a homosexual male stem cell. Then, once same-sex couples can successfully reproduce, the religious right is going to go apeshit and all hell is going to break loose! ;-)

    4. Re:So what? by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Funny

      I wasn't sure where you were going until the end there. That would be entertaining. How long before we'd see the first attempts at defining a person as the result of a straight man's sperm fertilizing a straight female's egg in a marriage. Probably called "Defense of humanity" act.

    5. Re:So what? by ElKry · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And, on a chilling (for me) twist, if they took stem cells from a woman, they could generate some sperm for her, thereby allowing her to impregnate herself .

    6. Re:So what? by Thiez · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You wouldn't want to do that though, since this would basically be incest++. If we ever get the tech to make impregnating yourself with yourself possible, it'll probably get banned because it'd lead to a higher chance of birth defects.

    7. Re:So what? by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wow. Incest++. That's a term that I had hoped would never be invented.

    8. Re:So what? by anjin-san+3 · · Score: 2, Funny

      What an immaculate idea!

    9. Re:So what? by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sperm doesn't have pairs of chromesomes, it has only one. But you're right, if you make sperm from female stem cells it could only have an X chromesome, never a Y chromesome, so you'd only get female offspring.

      The only inherent loss of genetic diversity would be the Y chromesome, which doesn't have much genetic information on it anyway. The wiki page on the Y chromesome points out that "the human Y chromosome itself contains only 78 working genes, compared to close to 1500 working genes on the X chromosome" and none of the 78 are "vital." For women anyway for obvious reasons.

      As long as the female that the sperm are derived from isn't closely related to the female that produces the egg, it wouldn't seem like there would be diversity loss.

    10. Re:So what? by bitt3n · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I wasn't sure where you were going until the end there. That would be entertaining. How long before we'd see the first attempts at defining a person as the result of a straight man's sperm fertilizing a straight female's egg in a marriage. Probably called "Defense of humanity" act.

      except gay people can have straight kids, so you'd actually want to somehow ask the sperm (nicely) whether he was gay. Then if he says yes, you'll need to freeze him until scientists develop a cure (for homosexuality or religion, take your pick)

      --
      how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
    11. Re:So what? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why would you pay to manufacture slave babies when you could just let the poor do it for you? They've been doing a fine job, even against their own economic interests, for centuries now.

    12. Re:So what? by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No. You would need to breed out every mismatched set of genes she has before the offspring would start bearing clones of themselves.

    13. Re:So what? by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not a clone at all. Instead you'd get the most inbred offspring imaginable. You as a person already have a pretty diverse genetic makeup - your DNA is made up of pairs of chromosomes. When you reproduce those pairs split to form some sequence (which side of the pair gets split off is essentially random).

      So for example you might have the following
      AB
      CD
      EF
      GH

      If the sperm created from you picks up the following:

      A
      D
      F
      G

      And the egg picks up:

      A
      D
      E
      H

      Then the resulting person's genetic code would be:

      AA
      DD
      FE
      GH

      That's different than the code of the original person. That property is pretty obvious when you think about it: 2 parents produce genetically different offspring every time they have different children right (aside from identical twins)?

      The problem is that for any negative recessive traits they'll only manifest themselves if it joins back with itself. Such as the AA and DD pairs above. With a stranger that's rather rare - they'd need to be carrying the same recessive gene AND you'd both need to give that gene when you reproduce. With sibling pairings, or offspring to parent pairings though, you share 50% of the same genetic code, so the chances of you both having negative recessive genes goes up dramatically, which is why inbred children are at such a high risk of birth defects. Now, with a 50% match being that bad, you can imagine that a person breeding with themselves (so a 100% match between both "parents") would produce children at an even higher risk of birth defects.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    14. Re:So what? by verbalcontract · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ironically we've had ++Incest for a while, where you have the baby and then you screw yourself.

    15. Re:So what? by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So you could take a stem cell from a man and generate an ovum, and take a stem cell from a woman and generate a sperm, and then put them together and conceive a child.

      As far as I know, we haven't made eggs from stem cells. Did a google search for "eggs from stem cells" but everything that came up was talking about the reverse (paying women to donate eggs to harvest ESC from) and didn't want to sort through those. It might be more difficult to make eggs from male stem cells, in fact we might find it's much more difficult to make eggs from any pluripotent stem cells, even if you do have 2 X chromosomes. And actually, I haven't been able to access the real article in stem cell and development, and no one seems to be sure if the sperm are from XY stem cells or not, or if they can functionally fertilize an egg or not. They may have gotten cells that look like sperm from male ESC that aren't actually fully functional.

      So we're probably a few years away from a female father and a male mother scenario.

      But would some of the eggs have a Y chromosome, and all of the sperm have X chromosomes? And would that work (i.e. where the fertilised egg was XY)?

      Assuming they do figure out how to get opposite gametes, sperm from XX and eggs from XY, then yeah, that could happen. If you are doing fully reversed gametes, that might work out as normal.

      What might become an issue is if, say, two gay men wanted to have a child that was basically their offspring. If we figure out how to make an egg from male cells, seems like half the eggs would have a Y chromesome. If you're fertilizing them with normal male sperm, half of them are also going to have a Y chromesome. Half the resulting offspring would have XY and be male, a quarter would have XX and be female, but there would be a quarter that had no X chromosome, and would be YY. They wouldn't survive, but I'm not sure how far they would develop. If they started to, and in an IVF setting a (female) surrogate were carrying normal embryos and one YY, would the YY implant but then later spontaneously abort, and would that event cause the other, viable embryos to also be lost?

  3. Well... by mdm-adph · · Score: 2, Informative

    There goes the male sex...? :P

    --
    It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
    1. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Spend some time around some militant feminists. Yes, yes you do.

    2. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      And to them I reply "GET YOUR ASS BACK IN THE KITCHEN AND MAKE ME A SANDWICH"! Because militant feminists are the worst kind of person and yelling at them never makes me feel bad.

    3. Re:Well... by AvitarX · · Score: 2, Funny

      As long as women don't find out about jar openers I think we're safe.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    4. Re:Well... by schon · · Score: 4, Funny

      A man and a woman get into an elevator and press the button for the top floor. Halfway up, the elevator stops. The man picks up the emergency phone, and is told that they'll be stuck for at least an hour.

      The woman looks at him slyly and says "want to make me feel like a woman?"

      "Sure", the man says, immediately taking off his shirt.

      "Iron this for me!"

    5. Re:Well... by mangu · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think we're safe for a while, until they manage to train the apes properly.

      What do you mean? I think we are pretty well trained right now!

  4. I can't believe it's not butter! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    For real, doesn't the fact that it was made in a lab mean it's NOT human?

    1. Re:I can't believe it's not butter! by alexborges · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If it has the DNA, its human.

      Thats the ONLY THING that ENCODES humanity....

      Food for thought, thats all Im saying.

      --
      NO SIG
    2. Re:I can't believe it's not butter! by blueg3 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It actually turns out that's not true -- if you had nothing but the DNA sequence, you could not (even in theory) construct a human from it. For one, the mitochondria organelles have their own genetics independent of our own. The organelles are inherited directly from the mother's cells. For another, how DNA is used and rendered into proteins, etc. is altered by chemicals that are carried along with the cell. If those are stripped away, information is lost.

  5. Now how will Slashdotters get laid? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    If sperm could easily be reproduced, I'm SURE the average Slashdotter's sex life will plummet.

  6. Where's the story? by bugg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Where's the BBC story that's mentioned? I think the editors left a link out.

    --
    -bugg
    1. Re:Where's the story? by Vectronic · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8138963.stm

  7. Mandatory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I for one, welcome our female overlords. I hope they find me useful and will not use me for food.

    1. Re:Mandatory... by Nadaka · · Score: 4, Funny

      speak for yourself, I don't mind if I she swallows.

  8. Misread by StDoodle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it any surprise that, with such an article, I had to do a double-take to properly read "...inferior levels of maturation."

  9. That's not news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Human sperm has been produced in laboratories ever since they got Internet connection and you could download porn to your lab PC.

    Oh, they mean artificial sperm. Nevermind then

  10. It's about time... by Tenek · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, this will address the critical shortage of sperm we face today.

    1. Re:It's about time... by RockWolf · · Score: 2, Funny

      Finally, this will address the critical shortage of sperm we face today.

      Alright, slashdotters! Now is your big chance - go get 'em.

      ...

      Yes, Timmy, outside into the big blue room where there is no undo button, the gamma is too high and there's no wall hacking. Yes, there, the great unknown where your mother gets your Dew and Cheetos, and computer parts arrive in trucks that you've glimpsed from your front door.

      ... Fine, go back to your one-handed surfing. *sighs* If you want something done right, do it yourself... The things I do for you lot.

      --
      February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
  11. This story is just too hard to swallow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I couldn't resist.

  12. Re:Sperm Shortage? by f8l_0e · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Consider a man a wife. The husband is infertile for reasons other than motility. They could now have a child with sperm produced from his stem cells.

  13. RTFM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The sperm meet the 4 basic descriptions for sperm: have 23 chromosomes, have head and tail, have egg-activating proteins, and swim. They are not exact copies of sperm, and, more importantly, only sperm made from male cells actually matured; those from female cells didn't.
    http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909164,00.html
    Post AC because I'm in a grouchy mood and commenting on something I usually don't comment on.

  14. Re:Wow science is amazing by Manfre · · Score: 4, Funny

    One step closer to not having hormonally imbalanced pregnant women...

    My wife and I really wish the human reproductive cycle involved external incubation. I'd create a device to post to twitter whenever the baby kicks.
     

  15. What's the problem? by Anonymusing · · Score: 4, Funny

    "the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation"

    So... they're suitable for producing politicians, lawyers, and bad Slashdot comments?

    --
    Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
  16. Re:Er.... by Defakto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's unethical about this?

    The use would be the unethical portion and science because there is no guarantee that what results from the sperm-egg coupling using one of this would be a viable, working person. Religious and moral beliefs aside I think this is a great thing. It may not now help us understand how our bodies work but it may lead to it in the future. I'm a firm believer that cloning has a huge potential in the long term for helping out humanity as a race.

  17. damaged sperm by bugi · · Score: 2, Funny

    I must be more careful to make sure all of my sperm is fresh. Perhaps there's some way I could extract the old sperm for disposal. Hmm, this will require some thinking.

  18. Ok, let me be the first to say this... by RelliK · · Score: 4, Funny

    Every sperm is sacred.

    --
    ___
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
  19. Re:This also from science today: by mtempsch · · Score: 2, Funny

    They're also working to develop a process that allows the transformation of gold into lead.

    They're late - the economists already have that process perfected.

  20. Blood==Stem Cells==Babies????? by MarkvW · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If a woman gets your blood, then she can bear your children? Wow! This will be a great argument for deadbeat dads! Now they can truthfully say "I never had sexual relations with that woman."

    Black markets for the blood of rich men . . .
    Personal IP rights in your personal blood composition . . .

    Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

  21. One implication by Arthur+B. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Interestingly, this opens the door to biological children from homosexuals couple. Sure it's been foreseen for a long time, still big big can of worm.

    --
    \u262D = \u5350
    1. Re:One implication by girlintraining · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Everything you know about creating life is wrong...

      1. You need two parents.
            False: cloning, X0 conception (Also called Turner syndrome).

      2. The parents must be of the opposite sex.
            False: Stem cell research can now create both eggs and sperm using DNA from another. DNA from a male can be inserted into an egg, and DNA from a female can be inserted into a sperm, although this has only been accomplished in a laboratory so far, and did not lead to viability.

      3. You need a parent at all.
            Partly true: Present technology cannot take a child from conception to birth without involvement of a female at some point during the maturation cycle. However, womb transplantation and IVF means that the question of which female is now open-ended.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    2. Re:One implication by thesandtiger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How is it any more a "big can of worm" than infertile hetero couples having children? Are you suggesting that there is some kind of ethical or moral problem with homosexuals having children with this tech that would not apply to heterosexual couples?

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    3. Re:One implication by Palshife · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Besides the obvious? Homosexual couples can't currently conceive children. This could grant that ability. That's pretty huge.

      --
      Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
    4. Re:One implication by thesandtiger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Infertile heterosexual couples can't currently conceive children. This could grant that ability. That's huge. So how is the sexual orientation of the couple relevant?

      If the OP had said "This will allow people who couldn't have conceived the ability to have children, this opens up a can of worms" then sure - but he (and you) specifically mention the sexual orientation of the couples as being relevant. I'm just trying to understand why.

      Is it because gay people would be able to have children that share the dna from 2 same-sex parents? Is it because gay people having kids is an ethical concern? Is it squeamishness about gay folks being able to have children?

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    5. Re:One implication by Thiez · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I was going to make a 'Having chromosomes can really bring you Down!' joke but feel the need to point out that humans have 2 * 23 = 46 chromosomes. Having 52 chromosomes means you're a platypus.

  22. Re:Er.... by Altus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Of course regular parents take this chance every time the conceive a child.

    I'm not sure I see the ethical dilemma in using this technology to allow a couple with fertility problems to reproduce. Sure, in this case you don't know what the odds are, and its possible something will go wrong that couldn't go wrong normally. But everyone who has a child takes the chance that the child might be deformed or sick or die shortly after birth. Its part of the human condition.

    --

    "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

  23. Bad news for JAV actors by McGregorMortis · · Score: 3, Funny

    This will revolutionize the Japanese Adult Video industry! They won't need to hire 50 guys to make a bukkake video.

  24. One upped by psychicninja · · Score: 5, Funny
    Man, this kind of beats the story I was just about to submit:

    Human Sperm Produced In The Lavatory

  25. Huge waste of tax dollars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We give these scientists grant money to build labs to work on scientific discoveries. And they turn around and spend all day masturbating in the labs!

  26. come on, people... by RelliK · · Score: 3, Funny

    Every sperm is great.

    --
    ___
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
    1. Re:come on, people... by FlatWhatson · · Score: 3, Funny

      If a sperm is lab-created,
      God gets quite irate!

      --
      BLAM!
  27. Moral issues? by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ethical concerns? I'm getting tired of silly ideological grounds against genetic manipulation. "Natural" does not mean better," and so long as nobody is hurt by doing this then there's no problem. People worried about ethical concerns over things like this are just luddities afraid of human biological progress. All humans are essentially biological machines, and there are no souls, and the faster people realize that the sooner we can progress past our silly human limitations.

    1. Re:Moral issues? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, actually "natural" means "millions if not billions of years of testing in the field, resulting in an unbeatable guaranteed fitness". Of course you could have luck and come up with something better. But it is highly unlikely. And you most likely would forget all kinds of little cycles in nature that are needed to keep things working in the long term.

      Wait for the second, third or fourth generation showing all kinds of problems, up to being unable to create the next generation at all.

      It's way more complicated than you can imagine. We got the tools, but we do not have the brains to use them properly. That is my standpoint. :)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  28. Re:Damn! by Gravedigger3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He'll take a house, car, and alimony from a third party (male) because god forbid a woman comes out of a divorce proceeding without being set for life.

    --
    All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -PF
  29. The DNA code is universal by mangu · · Score: 2, Informative

    For another, how DNA is used and rendered into proteins, etc. is altered by chemicals that are carried along with the cell. If those are stripped away, information is lost.

    Not true. The way DNA is encoded into aminoacids is a universal code which follows the same standards in animal, plant, or microorganism cells, with very few exceptions.

  30. Re:Wow science is amazing by Hurricane78 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, guess how the "pill" works: By partially simulating the same hormonal imbalance of a pregnant women!

    So she is constantly "pregnant" somehow, as long as she takes them.

    If you think about, how animals, when pregnant, are way more defensive and aggressive,
    and when the "pill" started to be used, this could somehow explain the feminist movement, which started at the same time. ^^

    I wonder what would happen, if we would get our women off the "pill" and used condoms for a year.
    Maybe it would be worth the lack of feel. ^^

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  31. Re:Sperm Shortage? by bitt3n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    despite the flamebait mod, OP has a valid point, namely the fact that, as with curing any diseases with a genetic basis, one is affecting the germ line of the next generation (which now contains the disease, whereas the absence of a cure would have reduced this likelihood). Many people are against direct germ-line therapy (ie, deliberately introducing changes into a sperm cell so that the baby grows up with a larger brain or whatever). Yet it's conceivable that the result of fixes like this will be that germ-line therapy is necessary to avoid the proliferation of genetic diseases on account of somatic cell cures. The alternative will be children with multiple serious diseases that must be cured each generation at great potential cost.

    --
    how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?