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Gene editing creates mice with two biological dads for the first time
October 16, 2018

For the first time, researchers have created mice with two dads. No female contributed to the rodents’ genetic makeup.

This unusual reproduction took place in a lab where researchers gathered fathers’ stem cells, and used them to produce embryos that were implanted into surrogate mothers.

The technique required scientists to edit the animals’ genes in order for the mice to mature enough to be born.

Even so, mouse pups with only fathers died a few days after birth, researchers report October 11 in Cell Stem Cell.

By contrast, previous research and this study have shown that some gene-edited mice with only mothers can survive to adulthood and have offspring of their own.

The researchers did the experiments to learn why mammals can reproduce only sexually, requiring two parents of the opposite sex, while other vertebrates, including turkeys, snakes and sharks, can sometimes reproduce with only one parent, says study coauthor Qi Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Females of those species can sometimes cause an unfertilized egg to produce offspring, a process called parthenogenesis.

 

Courtesy: sciencenews.org