Same sex mouse pups

2018/10/16 Agirre Ruiz de Arkaute, Aitziber - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Genetika

For the first time, and with the breaking of the rules of sexual reproduction, they have managed to create in the mouse children of two parents of the same sex. They have had to use genetic engineering to avoid the limitations imposed by sexual reproduction, but the result is that healthy offspring have been born and have been able to reproduce normally in adulthood.

The work has been done by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has been published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Yes, they have achieved only in the case of females. Attempting from the genetic material of two males, the offspring died 48 hours after birth.

Other animal species are able to reproduce through asexual reproduction, such as reptiles, amphibians and fish, but in the case of mammals it is mandatory to unite the genetic information of a female and a male. In fact, genetic imprints are given. That is, although in most of the genes that receive the embryo the alleles of the father and mother are activated in the same way, in certain genes one of them is active and the other is inactive. Thus, it is necessary that one be received by his father and the other by his mother; otherwise, the inactivation of both alleles in some genes causes serious developmental problems.

Haploid embryonic stem cells (single chromosomal copy, like germ cells) have been used during research instead of germ cells. They have removed 3 zones marked on their chromosomes to avoid the problem of the genomic imprint and have introduced the genetic material into an egg previously extracted to the nucleus.

According to scientists, the aim of the research is not at all to use this type of technique with humans, since the risk of abnormality is too high, but to know better how mammalian reproduction is. At the moment, the size of the imprint has been moderate: About 100 brands of imprints have been detected, many of them affecting the development of embryos.