For the first time successfully performed parthenogenesis in mice

Rats born from unfertilized eggs are a new achievement in reproductive science. A laboratory-born rodent, having only genes from its mother, grows to adulthood and successfully reproduces to produce the next generation of offspring, which is thought to be impossible in these animals. mammal.

A team of researchers has successfully raised an adult mouse born from an unfertilized egg. This is a method of asexual reproduction also known as parthenogenesis that occurs naturally in a number of animals, including some sharks, lizards, and birds. It produces an offspring containing half or all of their mother's genetic material, but does not require any genetic contribution from the male sex cell.

Successfully raised an adult mouse born from an unfertilized egg.

The authors wrote: "The reproductive success of mammals opens up many opportunities in agriculture, research, and medicine. Further identification and editing of ICRs adds control regions. marked to possibly improve the efficiency of genetic development".

A previous study that forced animals to reproduce through parthenogenesis had failed because of the lack of a genomic marker. In normal sexual reproduction, offspring receive two copies of a gene, one copy of each gene from both parents. However, the lack of genomic imprinting - meaning certain genes are chemically tagged to show which parent they come from - results in only one copy of the gene being expressed.

In their latest study, scientists used the gene editing tool CRISPR to target seven of these imprinted gene regions and change the different parts, to make it appear It seems that the mother's genetic code comes from the male. They then injected an enzyme into the egg to activate some genes and others to mimic a process that resembles an egg that has been fertilized by a male.

Biochemist Tony Perry of the University of Bath in the UK said: 'It will become an important part of the puzzle of very early embryonic development and how the two parental genomes are regulated. . And second, it's an important technical demonstration of the kind of potency these CRISPR tools have."

The researchers transferred 192 heterozygous embryos into 14 female mice, of which three were born alive, but only one survived to adulthood. This rat had a normal body weight at birth, but as an adult, it lost about 20% of its body weight compared to the study's control mice. However, this rat can still reproduce normally with males.

Marisa Bartolomei, a molecular biologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the study, said: "I think there are people who would look at this and say how is this possible, it's possible, it's possible. can replace procreation, reproduction without a man, it's hard to believe." However, it could help in the study of diseases caused by genomic imprinting, such as Prader-Willi syndrome or Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome.

Hopefully we will continue to have the future research needed to improve the process and the success rate of viable progenies.