Gay mice

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“This approach can significantly improve the developmental outcomes of embryonic stem cells and cloned animals, paving a promising path for the advancement of regenerative medicine.”

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Scientists in China have unveiled a new method for breeding baby mice with two male parents, and the resulting babies can survive to adulthood.

This is not the first time scientists have bred mice with two dads; a research team in Japan did so in 2023, using a different approach.

That the researchers were able to get it to work with two fathers adds to the importance of the study.

Now we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves: this is still a very difficult process in mice, which fails a lot of the time, and it's going to be a long while before scientists can think about whether the same techniques could be used for human embryos.

Even then, there will be a host of ethical and philosophical questions to address, but eventually this research could drive improvements in fertility treatments and our understanding of congenital disorders.

"Although the efficiency is low at present, this finding may be an important step toward achieving mammalian androgenesis," write the researchers.

The research has been published in PNAS.

The first mouse with two biological fathers has survived until adulthood, a new study has revealed.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences say they have succeeded in breeding mice using only genetic material from two males.

Through a technique called 'embryonic stem cell engineering’, scientists created eggs from the sperm of one father which could be fertilised by the other.

The stem cell technique used by the researchers is not entirely new, but all previous attempts faced seemingly insurmountable problems.

Mice bred using two sets of male genes either failed to grow at all or were born with severe developmental defects that prevented them from reaching adulthood.

However, by editing 20 different genes in the mice's stem cells, the researchers were able to prevent these issues.

Co-author of the study Dr Wei Li says: 'This work will help to address a number of limitations in stem cell and regenerative medicine research.'

While it is currently only possible in mice, this major breakthrough could pave the way for gay men to have children who are biologically related to both fathers.

She holds a graduate certificate in science communication from UC Santa Cruz and degrees in neuroscience and dance from the University of Florida. The team then fertilized these resulting eggs with sperm from male mice, ultimately generating a small number of offspring whose genes came only from male mice.

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The new study, conducted in China, used a different approach to reach a similar result.

The researchers started by removing DNA from an immature egg, or oocyte, taken from a female mouse.

It’s not a direct road to helping human same-sex parents conceive children, but the authors believe it will carry over to monkeys, which they hope to experiment on next.

The scientist’s unique approach involved genes that undergo imprinting. They then introduced sperm into the egg in order to grow unique stem cells seen only in embryos.

But the latest approach is novel, and could provide insights into preventing developmental diseases in humans. For context, we normally inherit a copy of a gene from each parent. Sasaki echoed the sentiment, noting that a number of technological hurdles and ethical quandaries "all hamper clinical application in humans in the near future."

Nicoletta Lanese is the health channel editor at Live Science and was previously a news editor and staff writer at the site.

However, the resulting offspring were infertile and unable to reproduce.

In this latest study, led by a team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, that's changed – though a lot of the techniques used were similar to the earlier experiments. In their previous work, they were able to breed mice with two moms that survived to adulthood with much less genetic tweaking, as have other research groups.

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