Scientists are working on an experimental
technique which could one day remove women from
the baby-making process.

In a landmark achievement, a team of British
researchers have managed to conceive baby mice
without fertilising an egg cell with sperm

The familiar concept of sperm meeting egg could
soon be a thing of the past
Lead scientist Dr Tony Perry, a molecular
embryologist from the University of Bath, said:
“Our work challenges the dogma, held since early
embryologists first observed mammalian eggs
around 1827 and observed fertilisation 50 years
later, that only an egg cell fertilised with a sperm cell can result in live mammalian birth.” The technique fuses sperm with ordinary cells
derived from skin or other tissue to create viable
embryos. It could allow gay men to have babies with each
other or let a man fertilise his own cells to produce
offspring containing a mixture of genes inherited
from him and his parents. The technique could allow women whose fertility
has been wiped out by cancer drugs or radiotherapy
to have their own children, or even aid the
preservation of endangered species, since it avoids
the need to recover eggs. Dr Perry stressed that the early work demonstrated
only a principle, and major hurdles would have to
be overcome before reproduction without egg cells
became technically feasible.
Could women soon find themselves left out of
babymaking?
He added: “This is speculative – it’s entirely
speculative and fanciful.” For the experiment, the scientists started off by
creating “parthenogenote” mouse embryos. These are
all-female embryos made without sperm by tricking
an egg into developing as if it has been fertilised. Mammalian embryos produced this way usually die
after a few days because they lack the right
programming. But Dr Perry’s team of researchers
found that injecting the parthenogenotes with sperm
transformed them into normal embryos that went on
to produce healthy offspring. The outcome, reported in the journal Nature
Communications, is hugely significant because
parthenogenotes share much in common with ordinary
cells such as skin cells. Both kinds of cell multiply by means of a non-
sexual form of cell division known as mitosis. If injecting sperm into a mammalian parthenogenote
can produce offspring, theoretically at least it
should be possible to achieve the same result using
mitotic cells not derived from eggs.
The technology could allow conservationists to save
endangered species
The process relies on the sperm cell being
reprogrammed in a way scientists previously thought
could only occur as a result of egg fertilisation. In the study, 30 mouse pups were born with a success
rate of 24%. This compares with a 1% to 2% success
rate for offspring created by the Dolly the Sheep
method of cloning by transferring DNA to donated
eggs. Some of the mice went on to have offspring
themselves, and a number had offspring that went
on to have their own pups. Fertility is generally
seen as a sign of fitness and good health. Dr Perry said his team was planning to take the next
step of attempting to produce live offspring from
ordinary non-egg cells rather than parthenogenotes. Speaking at a press conference in London, he said:
“The practical applications of this as the
technology stands at the moment are not very broad. “What we’re saying is that these embryos are mitotic
cells – mitotic cells are the type of cell that almost
every dividing cell in your body is. And therefore
potentially one day we might be able to extend what
we’ve shown in these mitotic cells to other mitotic
cells. “Will we be able to do that? I don’t know. But I
think, if it is ever possible, one day in the distant
future people will look back and say this is where
it started.”
Dr Paul Colville-Nash, from the Medical Research
Council, which funded the study, said: “This is an
exiting piece of research which may help us to
understand more about how human life begins and
what controls the viability of embryos, mechanisms
which may be important in fertility. “It may one day even have implications for how we
treat infertility, though that’s probably still a long
way off.” The parthenogenotes injected with sperm were
found to have undergone “distinctive chromatin
remodelling”, meaning that the protein “packaging”
housing their DNA had been altered. Embryologist Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, from
The Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “I’m not
surprised that the authors are excited about this. I
think it is a very interesting paper, and a technical
tour de force. And I am sure it will tell us
something important about reprogramming at these early steps of development.”

source:https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1776276/men-could-have-babies-without-women-by-creating-artificial-eggs-from-skin-cells/#

Interesting

Why would I want to have a baby on my own especially as a man. I don't imagine a baby sucking milk from a hairy nipplë. Changing diapers filled with poop is another war on it's own then the waking up in the middle of the night to feed the baby. Ah the day caring of the baby, will the baby follow me to work? Women dey try sha when it comes to motherhood alone.