oops, not Drudge enough, let's try again
RATS BORN TO MICE IN BIZARRE LAB WORK . . .
Much better, back to the story, when reading the headline I pictured some poor female mouse trying to birth rat babies, but that's not what's happening hear. They're using mice testicles as a place to produce viable rat sperm and then implant the mouse produced sperm into rat eggs to be carried by rat mommies.
Still fittingly bizarre, but not quite what I imagined from the headline. Maybe most people didn't read the headline the way I did, but I don't think I was completely alone in my misapprehension.
I like this bit from the article
While this breakthrough raises the possibility of growing human sperm in other animals to generate viable human offspring, "it is not a good idea," Shinohara said. Besides the ethical issues, he noted there are viruses present in animals that could write themselves into genetic codes of the human sperm.
The next step would be transpecies womb usage, though obviously it would be better to use the larger species as the womb host, rather than the smaller. Bloodtype difference probably make such things impossible, even for closely related species, but if it were possible it would be another way to preserve disappearing wild species, or even possibly revive an extinct one.
No comments:
Post a Comment