A Motherless Child: Scientists Birth Babies Sans Female Eggs

It might be possible to make babies without female eggs, according to British scientists who claim they have managed to create a litter of mice without fertilizing a female egg.

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According to the study, which was released in the journal Nature, a group of Bath University biologists bred baby mice by injecting sperm into a non-viable type of embryo called a “parthenogenote,” which are egg cells that have been “tricked” into becoming embryos without being fertilized with sperm.

However the embryos die after a few days and the scientists repeated the effort, but by injecting mice sperm in the “parthenogenote” and transferring the embryos into female mice, where they developed into “perfectly healthy mouse pups,” the document says.

“Our work challenges the dogma, held since early embryologists first observed mammalian eggs around 1827 and observed fertilization 50 years later, that only an egg cell fertilized with a sperm cell can result in a live mammalian birth,” said the report’s author Tony Perry in a statement.

“What we’re talking about are different ways of making embryos. Imagine that you could take skin cells and make embryos from them? This would have all kinds of utility,” he added.

Scientists will continue their investigation on the basis of the Parthenogenesis, which is a technique employed by certain plants and animals to fertilize eggs and create embryos without the need for sperm.