Making Babies without Eggs

Scientists have succeeded in creating healthy baby mice by tricking sperm into believing they were fertilising normal eggs.

18:22 14 September 2016

Scientists say early experiments suggest that it could be possible to make babies without the use of eggs in the future. Their comment came after they succeeded in creating healthy baby mice by tricking sperm into believing they were fertilising normal eggs.

 

In their findings, they said that in the distant future, women could be removed from the baby-making process.

 

The scientists from the University of Bath started with an unfertilised egg in their experiments. Using chemicals, they tricked the egg into becoming a pseudo-embryo. The fake embryos share much in common with ordinary cells, suck as skin cells. Researchers said that if injecting sperm into mouse pseudo-embryos could produce healthy babies, then it might one day be possible to achieve a similar result in humans using cells that are not from eggs.

 

Dr Tony Perry, one of the researchers, said: "This is the first time that anyone has been able to show that anything other than an egg can combine with a sperm in this way to give rise to offspring.

 

"It overturns nearly 200 years of thinking."