Researchers over in China say they’ve successfully bred healthy mice with two mothers using new gene editing technology they’re trying out. Their aim was to research and try to understand mammalian reproduction.
A grand total of 29 bimaternal (from two mothers) offspring were produced using 210 embryos through the course of this study. According to the study they all were “normal” and “lived to adulthood and even had babies of their own, although they showed “some defective features”, according to the researches ver at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Unfortunately the results weren’t as promising when mice pups were produced from two fathers. Those produced from two male mice only managed to survive a couple of days.
One of the study’s co-authors, Wei Li, told in a news release that “this research shows us what is possible”.
She continued to explain:
“We saw that the defects in bimaternal mice can be eliminated and that bipaternal reproduction barriers in mammals can also be crossed through imprinting modification, we also revealed some of the most important imprinted regions that hinder the development of mice with same sex parents, which are also interesting for studying genomic imprinting and animal cloning.”
This research has been met with a mixed reception, with many questioning its morality, and its ethical implications.
Dr Tim Hore, and expert in epigenetics and development at the University of Otago has explained that “the tremendous amount of genetic modification needed in order to do what they did, makes it implausible to use it in anything other than research”.
