Timely and Inspiring Prophetic Analysis so you can Prepare.

The Daily Mail, by Jonathan Chadwick: For the first time, mice born to two fathers have grown up and produced offspring, scientists in China have revealed.

The researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University managed to insert two sperm cells – one from each father – into a mouse egg whose nucleus had been removed.

A gene editing technique was then used to reprogram parts of the sperm DNA to allow an embryo to develop – a process called androgenesis.

The embryo, featuring the genetic material from two fathers, was transferred to a female womb and allowed to grow to term.

Finally, the resulting offspring (male) managed to grow to adulthood and become a parent after mating conventionally with a female.

In their lab experiments, the researchers managed to successfully demonstrate the method twice – birthing two fertile male mice, both with two fathers.

The promising breakthrough could pave the way for two gay men to have a child of their own who can also go on to have a family.

However, experts have cautioned that there is still a way to go before any such procedures are attempted in humans.

‘In this study, we report the generation of fertile androgenetic mice,’ the Chinese experts say in their paper, published in the journal PNAS.

‘Our findings, together with previous achievements of uniparental reproduction in mammals, support previous speculation that genomic imprinting is the fundamental barrier to the full-term development of uniparental mammalian embryos.’

Experts caution that we are not ready to start such experiments in humans, which could be deeply unethical.

Christophe Galichet, research operations manager at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in London, points out that the success rate of the experiments was very low.

Of 259 mice embryos that were transferred to female mice, just two survived, grew to adulthood and then fathered their own offspring.

‘This research on generating offspring from same-sex parents is promising,’ Galichet, who was not involved with the experiments, told New Scientist.

‘[But] it is unthinkable to translate it to humans due to the large number of eggs required, the high number of surrogate women needed and the low success rate.’

Today, gay couples who want to have children usually rely on a surrogate mother or father to bring a child into the world.

Unlike with a pair of heterosexual parents, this means that one of the couple is not actually related to the child. So it’s long been a dream for gay couples to raise a child who has genetic material from both fathers (or both mothers).

Back in 2023, researchers revealed they’d been able to create mice from two biological fathers for the first time.

Because mice are actually genetically very similar to us, the promising results hinted the feat could be replicable in humans.

But even if a human child could be birthed from two fathers, it potentially threw a huge ethical quandary into the mix: What if that human child is not able to have children of their own through normal conception when they reach adulthood?

Fortunately, these new experiments suggest this might not be an issue.

The human related to both of his or her fathers would grow up and be able to have a family of their own, the results suggest.

During heterosexual reproduction, genetic material from a male carried by the sperm combines with genetic material from a female contained in the egg, or ovum.

When this happens, a group of genes called ‘homologous chromosomes’ from the mother come together with those from the father and combine in a process called ‘crossing over’.

But when both sets of homologous chromosomes come from either two males or two females, the genes don’t copy over properly, leading to ‘imprinting abnormalities’ and developmental defects.

That’s why the researchers had to turn to gene editing, which makes tweaks in the DNA, and target genes responsible for imprinting.

Researchers are also considering this approach in larger animals like monkeys – but the technological hurdles will be significantly larger.

Dr Helen O’Neill, molecular geneticist at the University College London, called the new work a ‘major step forward’.

‘It confirms that genomic imprinting is the main barrier to uniparental reproduction in mammals and shows it can be overcome,’ she told New Scientist.

Earlier this year, another Chinese team got mice with two fathers to grow to adulthood by editing 20 different genes in their stem cells, but the rodents weren’t fertile.

Prophetic Link:
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” Luke 17:28-30

Source References

• First mouse with two biological FATHERS has its own babies – in breakthrough that could pave the way for gay men to have children