As a result of elaborate experiments, a team of researchers was able to produce mouse babies with two biological fathers. Study leader Katsuhiko Hayashi from Japan's Osaka University presented the still unpublished results at a conference in London, according to media reports.
Accordingly, the researchers were able to convert skin cells of male mice into egg cells using a special technique. They then fertilized these eggs with sperm and had the embryos carried to term by a female mouse. The result is baby mice with two fathers. The results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Mice with two biological mothers were introduced several years ago. At that time, experiments were also carried out with cells from two fathers, but these babies survived at most a few days.
The survival rates with Hayashi's approach are so far low, according to a report in the journal "Nature". Of 630 embryos implanted in surrogate mothers, only seven developed into living mouse babies. However, these have grown normally and are also capable of reproduction, Hayashi said at the conference, according to Nature.
The technology is still far from being transferred to humans. "There are big differences between mice and humans," said the developmental biologist. The stem cell researcher George Daley, Dean of Harvard Medical School, said, according to the "Guardian", the experiments were fascinating. But the biology of the formation of human sex cells is still too little understood to reproduce the experiments in mice in humans.