Mice with two dads have their own babies for the first time

For the first time, scientists were able to create healthy and fertile mice from their two biological fathers.

Research published on Monday (June 23) in the Science Journal pnasreveals that two healthy, fertile “double-headed” mice have been created, with genetic material derived from two men.

The health and fertility of double-headed mice can affect future human same-sex parents – helping two men have children of their own genes – but experts said it was “unthinkable” to translate the experiment into human tests right away.

In 2004, there were no two mothers and fathers, but two biological father mice were created two years ago, and this is the first time a mouse born to two fathers has given birth to their own puppies.

A team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, led by Yanchang Wei, was able to create double-headed mice by combining two sperm cells into nucleated eggs. Scientists then used gene editing techniques to “reprogram” parts of the sperm DNA to allow for embryo development. The embryos were then embedded in surrogate female mice and eventually birthed.

Two puppies of 259 embryos created survived and grew into adulthood. Both male father mice mate with female mice after growth and gave birth to their own healthy puppies.

“In this study, we report the production of fertile andro-hereditary mice,” the scientist said. “Our findings, together with previous achievements of unigrant reproduction in mammals, support the previous speculation that genome imprinting is a fundamental barrier to the end-of-term development of unified mammalian embryos.”

Early this year, China’s independent team Reportedly, we were able to create several double-headed mice that grew and grew, but were not fertile.

Christophe Galichet, research operations manager at Sainsbury Wellcome Research Center, New Scientist: “This study on the production of offspring from same-sex parents is promising, but it is unlikely to translate into humans due to the number of eggs needed, the large number of surrogate women needed, and the low success rate.”

Furthermore, the journal reports that the effects of causing genetic changes are not yet fully understood.

Nevertheless, molecular geneticists at University London College said, “We have confirmed that genome imprinting is the main barrier to mammalian unified reproduction, and demonstrate that it can be overcome.”

However, there is opposition to research from people in animal rights groups for the ethical treatment of animals (PETA), and spokesmen have called the research “rainbow wash.”

“This is not groundbreaking, it’s grotesque. True progress lies in the non-animal methods associated with cutting-edge humans,” said Jeffrey Brown, scientific advisor at PETA.

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