Adult stem cells now make sperm… and eggs.

Scot C. Trypal

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Scot C. Trypal
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Okay, not quite adult, but imagine the firestorm this could create:

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060619/full/060619-13.html

Stem cells from a mouse embryo have been coaxed into producing both eggs and sperm in the same dish.
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Applying the technique to humans would be controversial, not least because it raises the possibility that men might be able to produce eggs, and women sperm.
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I don’t know where to start, only to say I know people who’d want this, and, if it’s possible, it’ll likely happen somewhere. If it does, I’d brace for an outcry far greater than the one following the first ivf baby, and have to wonder if it could ever become a normal part of humanity, as ivf kids now seem to be.

Less controversial would be a woman making her own eggs from her adult stem cells, after, say, cancer treatment left her infertile, but that too could be frowned on for slippery-slope reasons.
 
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That is impressive! I would like to see more work done to use the stem cells for repairing the injured humans extant,rather than making new ones.
 
Almo said:
Wow. This is like some new form of inbreeding.
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That was one of my first concerns. If 1st cousins are dangerous breeding couples, no doubt mating with yourself would be a bad idea. I’d be near sure that’s not a “therapeutic use” in the researcher’s minds.

There is a question as to if the eggs and sperm would do this anyway, actually joining just due to the fact they’re produced simultaneously from the same body of cells, and it seems they plan to answer that (she says it’s “unlikely” though, for some reason).

It always amazes me that stuff like this is a matter of one or a couple additives. A little retinoic acid and you get sperm and eggs.

Such stuff is why I love and fear science :).
 
Scot C. Trypal said:
That was one of my first concerns. If 1st cousins are dangerous breeding couples, no doubt mating with yourself would be a bad idea. I’d be near sure that’s not a “therapeutic use” in the researcher’s minds.
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Would mating with yourself produce a clone of yourself?

If not, what would it be called?
 
SPQR said:
Would mating with yourself produce a clone of yourself?

If not, what would it be called?
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Nope, not a clone, and that's the problem. Remembering way back to biology courses… You have mechanisms to shuffle things up a bit in meiosis. Then each gamete gets one copy of your chromosomes. Once one of these sperm and eggs get back together I’d think you’d dramatically increase the chance of creating a child with the genetic diseases caused by two copies of recessive genes that would lay dormant in your clone, just as they do in you. Any biologists care to correct me?

Technically wouldn’t he/she be your child? What you’d be seems like the tougher classification :confused:…

[edited for oddly placed punctuation]
 
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A child that you both fathered and mothered would be your child...but the union would be both masturbatory and incestuous, since both parents (you and yourself) had the same parents. Therefore the child would be a monster, and even though you'd get presents on both Father's Day and Mother's Day, on both those days you'd have to sit through dinner across the table from someone with slime-dripping tentacles sticking out of their eyesockets. Which may or may not be worth it, depending on your ethics, your gross-out factor, and how good the presents are. Something better than gardening tools or a new mixer, I'd say.
 
TragicMonkey said:
A child that you both fathered and mothered would be your child...but the union would be both masturbatory and incestuous, since both parents (you and yourself) had the same parents. Therefore the child would be a monster, and even though you'd get presents on both Father's Day and Mother's Day, on both those days you'd have to sit through dinner across the table from someone with slime-dripping tentacles sticking out of their eyesockets. Which may or may not be worth it, depending on your ethics, your gross-out factor, and how good the presents are. Something better than gardening tools or a new mixer, I'd say.
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What if it did look just like you, but was evil? Perhaps with a goatee?
 
Does this mean that one day gay and lesbian couples could have children that both people in the couple were the actual parents of? Taking eggs from one half of a lesbian couple and combining it with sperm created by the other?
 
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