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Mice Created From Artificially Developed Embryos

Accepted submission by takyon at 2016-09-14 21:25:41
Science

Scientists at the University of Bath have created mice by injecting sperm [bath.ac.uk] into parthenogenotes [wikipedia.org]:

Eggs can be 'tricked' into developing into an embryo without fertilisation, but the resulting embryos, called parthenogenotes, die after a few days because key developmental processes requiring input from sperm don't happen.

However, scientists from the Department of Biology & Biochemistry at the University of Bath have developed a method of injecting mouse parthenogenotes with sperm that allows them to become healthy baby mice with a success rate of up to 24 per cent. This compares to a rate of zero per cent for parthenogenotes or about two per cent for nuclear transfer cloning.

[...] The baby mice born as a result of the technique seem completely healthy, but their DNA started out with different epigenetic marks compared with normal fertilisation. This suggests that different epigenetic pathways can lead to the same developmental destination, something not previously shown.

The discovery has ethical implications for recent suggestions that human parthenogenotes could be used as a source of embryonic stem cells because they were considered inviable. It also hints that in the long-term future it could be possible to breed animals using non-egg cells and sperm. Although this is still only an idea, it could have potential future applications in human fertility treatment and for breeding endangered species.

Mice produced by mitotic reprogramming of sperm injected into haploid parthenogenotes [nature.com] (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12676) (DX [doi.org])


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