Babies could be born without a biological mother after scientists made a huge step forward in helping infertile people have babies. Scientists revealed only yesterday that they have turned human skin cells into eggs and fertilised them with sperm in the lab for the first time.
American experts from Oregon Health & Science University say that the human eggs made from skin cells are ready for fertilisation. When the team fertilised the egg with sperm, it began growing into an embryo, until the experiment was halted at six days – the point at which an embryo would be transferred to the womb in IVF. The breakthrough would allow older women struggling to conceive or women who lack eggs for medical reasons to have a baby.
It also opens the door for DNA from a man being placed inside a donor egg and fertilised by another man, leading to a baby with two biological fathers and no DNA from a woman.
“It also would allow same-sex couples to have a child genetically related to both partners,” Dr Paula Amato, co-author of the study told AFP.
The study could also also result in a infinite amount of eggs.
Dr Amato told The Telegraph: “In theory, the technique could result in a limitless number of eggs.
“The skin cell DNA however can come from anyone, even if they personally don’t have any eggs or remaining eggs – older women, women after cancer treatment, people born without eggs, men.
“So, it’s a way to produce eggs genetically identical to the person providing the skin cell, even if they personally don’t have any eggs, and allows them to reproduce to have a genetically-related child.”
However, scientists are warning that the technology called in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is still a long way from becoming available to aspiring parents.
Researchers made this breakthrough by first removing the nucleus from normal skin cells and then transferred them into a donor egg which had its nucleus removed.
However, a major stumbling block is that skin cells have 46 chromosomes, but eggs have 23. To overcome this scientists managed to remove the extra chromosomes using a process they are calling “mitomeiosis”, which “mimics natural cell division and causes one set of chromosomes to be discarded, leaving a functional gamete”, the researchers explained in a statement.
