Two Male Mice Produce Children – with the Help of Scientists

December 14, 2010

Gay couples may be allowed to have children through a different means after scientists have created offspring from two male mice.

The technology could one day be used to allow gay and lesbian couples to have their own children, providing yet another option to produce offspring.

Researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas manipulated stem cells from a male mouse to create male eggs, which were then put into embryos and transplanted into surrogate female mice.
The eggs were then mated with the other male mouse. The resulting offspring had genetic material from only the two males.

Researchers say the process could be simplified one day so “two men could produce their own genetic sons and daughters” and so could lesbian couples.

“It may also be possible to generate sperm from a female donor and produce viable male and female progeny with two mothers,” researchers said.

The results of the study, which were published last week in the journal Biology of Reproduction, could one day be used to help stem the loss of species where no females remain.

Researchers at the University of Newcastle in 2008 used female embryonic stem cells to create sperm cells.

Image by Muhammad Mahdi Karim at en.wikipediaderivative work: Zoohouse (Baby_mice.jpg) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons