Lab-Made Eggs Produce Healthy Mice

ananyo writes "Japanese researchers have coaxed mouse stem cells into becoming viable eggs that produce healthy offspring. Last year, the same team successfully used mouse stem cells to make functional sperm (other groups have produced sperm cells in vitro). The researchers used a cocktail of growth factors to transform stem cells into egg precursors. When they added these egg precursor cells to embryonic ovary tissue that did not contain sex cells, the mixture spontaneously formed ovary-like structures, which they then grafted onto natural ovaries in female mice. After four weeks, the stem-cell-derived cells had matured into oocytes. The team removed the oocytes from the ovaries, fertilized them and transplanted the embryos into foster mothers. The offspring that were produced grew up to be fertile themselves."

Comments

And we move forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Robotic spaceships that produce humans at their destination here we come!

Re:And we move forward

[ravenshrike]

We still need the artificial uterus. And the caretaker robots that can create healthy human minds.

Re:And we move forward

[Anonymous Coward]

And the caretaker robots that can create healthy human minds.

We've already invented TV.

Re:And we move forward

[Aguazul2]

If you remember, the Axlotl tanks turned out to be in fact surrogate mothers (check wikipedia). So embedding them in other mice is on the same kind of level as Tleilaxu technology.

Re:And we move forward

[h4rr4r]

If the robots can build a colony why waste time building human colonists?

Just have robotic colonists.

Are they as nutritious as organic mice???

[Anonymous Coward]

inquiring Pythons want to know.

Einstein Tesla Baby

[badford]

Lab Notes: August 12, 2023

Einsla is becoming a remarkable young woman. She speaks 29 languages and has built 7 helper bots from spare parts found around the lab. She even re-engineered her iPhone 15 to send tweets telepathically. Who'd a thunk that stem cell eggs and sperm would be so friggin dope?

Lab ntes : Octobre 54, bleh

Einsla is all-powerful. I must obey. farble-blerp. please get out of my mind. [end of transcript]

Anybody know the expected relevance?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This result is certainly cool in itself, and will probably (eventually) find application in squicking the moralists when an egg produced from a gay man's stem cells is united with sperm synthesized from a transexual woman or something(and will those fireworks ever be worth watching...); but what percentage of the more prosaic fertility-clinic cases are ultimately caused by defective eggs?

I've heard of some cases where the mitochondrial DNA is defective, so the only way to produce a healthy child is by slapping 3rd-party mitochondria into the maternal egg cell before fertilization, and lots of cases where sperm defects end up requiring IVF, sometimes with donor sperm. Are there also a fairly large number of cases where defective eggs are the cause of infertility that just can't be addressed at present by anything other than using donor gametes?

Re:Anybody know the expected relevance?

[Joe Torres]

There have already been viable mice produced from the genetic information of two male mice: Generation of Viable Male and Female Mice from Two Fathers (link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043133/)

Re:Anybody know the expected relevance?

[snadrus]

If I read it properly, it's now possible for Women to asexually reproduce with themselves, or any pair of genders.

Re:Anybody know the expected relevance?

[tbird81]

Surely this means a woman without ovaries (e.g. removed because of cancer) could have her stem-cells harvested from blood (if this is possible), and use these stem cells to create ova. The ova can then be fertilised and inserted in a surrogate uterus.

Parenthood no longer needs to be consensual.

[Remus Shepherd]

If you're not sure what practical application this research contributes to, consider this: We can now create genetic offspring of infertile people. More than that, we can now create genetic offspring of people without their knowledge or consent. All we need is a stem cell sample. Note recent research that enables skin cells to be turned into stem cells.

It shouldn't be long before companies are advertising services like 'Have George Clooney's baby' or 'Father Christina Hendricks' child'. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The first child with two daddies -- literally -- is just around the corner.

Re:Parenthood no longer needs to be consensual.

[i kan reed]

literally -- is just around the corner.

Could you give me an address for this corner?

New cloning technique.

[wiredog]

Make sperm and egg from the same source.. Surprised they didn't try that.

Re:New cloning technique.

[blueg3]

That doesn't result in a clone.

Re:New cloning technique.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually way worse than cloning. It's much more like a super inbreeding. You're taking 1/2 the DNA and combining it with the same DNA. All of your homogenous dominant and recessive traits become the same, but with the same as any inbreeding, any recessive gene based disease you were a "carrier" for you automatically have a 25% of introducing full on into the offspring. There is an incredibly slight chance that you do end up with a clone if you pull the correctly matched half of each chromosome from each sperm and egg and join them.

Not cloning

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

The practical application of this procedure is probably some way off. If perfected for humans, it could become the ultimate fertility treatment. So long as you have a body, you can have a baby. Surrogate mothers probably needed though.

As of now, it's interesting research that won't interest vain but rich pet owners. You aren't producing a time-shifted twin of the older organism. But if the egg/sperm cells produced are healthy, you might well produce an artifical hermaphrodite where the father and mother are the same.

Maybe in the future gay and lesbian couples can become the full biological parents of their own children without resort to a third-party donor or surrogate.

Mice?

[Half-pint HAL]

It's just a shame they were expecting parrots to hatch....

Mice hatched from eggs

[wiwa]

My first thought on reading the headline was that they made mice that hatched from eggs. The actual discovery is much less impressive.