In mammals, procreation has always needed two different sex individuals, each of which provides half of the genetic kit to the unborn child. With genetic engineering, however, today everything seems to become possible. Also imagine a biological child of two parents of the same sex. This is the one who work four experts in Shanghai Jiao Tong University Reproductive Medicine, who in a new article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have just described their latest success: two mouse puppies born from two fathers, who have proved to be fertile, and able to have fruitful offspring.
The news is a real revolution in the field of androgenesis, that is, the study of asexual reproduction that takes place with the use of genetic material coming only from the male sex. A research field that in recent years has been attracting attention to its potential theoretical repercussions, but also for the practical implications that it could have in our species: if the technologies will become sufficiently safe and effective, an androgenic PMA technique would allow children to also have children of gay men, without the need for a donor for the female half of the child’s chromosomes.
In recent months, another team of researchers had already managed to produce mouse puppies live using the genetic material of two male specimens (and without the genetic contribution of a female). In that case, however, the puppies were all sterile results. The new research, therefore, has managed to achieve a new stage of particular importance, creating for the first time and for androgenesis of the specimens of healthy mammal, and capable in turn to reproduce.
The research focused on the regulation of some DNA regions known as Imprinting against Regions (ICRS), sequences of the genetic material that control a phenomenon, that of genomic imprinting, for which some genes are expressed in a different way if they come from the maternal or paternal genetic equipment. As a rule, in an embryo these regions decide which genes to activate in the key moments of development. When using only the DNA of one of the two sexes, however, their balance is altered, and this normally causes serious anomalies of the development and the death of the embryo.
Going to work precisely on seven ICRS, the researchers managed to restore, at least in two cases, the normal embryonic development of mice. The research involved 259 embryos, obtained by injecting the DNA of two specimens of male mouse in a deprived oocyte of the nucleus (the cellular orientation in which the mother’s DNA is contained), and then changed epigenetically modified (without touching their genetic composition, but by modifying only the mechanisms that regulate the expression of the genes) in order to rebalance the activity of the seven ICRS chosen by the researchers.
Three of the embryos thus obtained have developed until birth, and two survived up to adulthood, thus managing to reproduce normally and produce a healthy offspring. Obviously, the work to be done to optimize this technique is still very, given that two births out of 259 embryos is an extremely contained success rate. And before thinking of using such technology on our species it will take a long time for a long time.
The possible applications – the authors of the study write – would however be many: these androgenesis techniques, such as those – simpler to achieve – that exploit the DNA of two females, could improve the effectiveness of medically assisted procreation treatments, would allow to study the genesis of many genetic diseases, and perhaps they would help to develop new treatments, and as we said, they could open the doors of the procreation. to couples composed of two biological males. It is better to equip themselves, therefore, and exploit the decades available before the androgenesis actually becomes a realities to deal with the obvious bioethical, philosophical and legal issues to which a similar reproduction revolution will put us.