RT-Mouse Stem Cells Transformed by Scientists
VOA News
02 May 2003, 16:21 UTC
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania say they have transformed ordinary embryo stem cells from mice into viable egg cells in the laboratory.
If fully borne out, the achievement raises the possibility of creating "designer" eggs that could make it easier to engineer desired traits into animals, and even permit sexual reproduction between two men.
Embryonic stem cells already have been transformed into various other types of cells, raising the possibility, for example, of cloning healthy heart muscle cells from a heart patient's own genetic material, or healthy eggs from a woman whose ovulation is faulty. But since the stem cells could come from a male embryo, offspring could come from two male parents, one supplying the egg and the other the sperm.
The experiments have been performed only on mouse embryos, but doctors Karin Huebner and Hans Schoeler - whose research is reported the the journal Science - note that, at the embryonic level, the mouse and human species are very similar. |
