Scientists Have Created Baby Mice From Two Dads And My Mind is Blown

My mind is officially blown.

Researchers have created baby mice who have — this is wild — 2 biological dads.

I mean, what? How?

So, they took the skin cells of 2 male mice, and made eggs. Then they implanted said eggs into female mice.

Nine months later — or however long it takes for mice to have babies — they had healthy baby mice.

Anyone else having trouble wrapping their brain around this?

According to CNN, researchers used skin cells from the tails of fully grown male lab mice to create these mouse pups.

They somehow — using a little more than magic — turned these skin cells into “pluripotent stem cells — a type of cell that scientists have reprogrammed into an embryonic state.”

The researchers did a bunch of science-y stuff — a lot of work with X, Y, XO, and XX chromosomes — and it somehow equalled healthy baby mice.

My brain hurts.

This goes against just about everything I learned about biology in college.

This study is particularly neat because it takes advantage of errors that are known to occur during culture of XY cells, which lead to loss of the Y chromosome and subsequent gain of a second X chromosome, resulting in XX cells that are capable of generating live offspring.

Rod Mitchell, a professor of developmental endocrinology at the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland

Just think of the potential here.

In theory, it is possible to create a baby from male-male couples.

Not only could this help same-sex couples have a biological child with the DNA of BOTH parents, it could help with fertility treatments for moms who are having trouble conceiving.

Of course, this reproductive biological wizardry is still years from being safe for humans.

It is expected that application into humans takes a long time, maybe 10 years or more. Even if it is applied, we never know whether the eggs are safe enough to produce (a) baby.

Katsuhiko Hayashi, a professor of genome biology at Osaka University in Japan

There are ethical and legal questions that would have to be addressed around making human babies from two male individuals.

See, only about 1% of the embryos created using male-male cells produced a mouse pup.

What happens to all the embryos created but not used? Does it violate ethical norms of respect to create so many potential human lives knowing that the vast majority will be destroyed or indefinitely stored?

Glenn Cohen, the faculty director of Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics

What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Witchcraft? Harry Potter Magic? LOL!!