Sperm will be obtained from the skin

This week, the International Consortium of Stem Cell Research ( The Hinxton Group ) concluded that at the current pace of stem cell research, scientists will be able to grow eggs and spermatozoa from ordinary cell types like skin cells for example after 5 years. This kind of technological breakthrough will give a chance to thousands of childless couples, and also contributes to the research of reproductive problems.

At the end of last year, scientists reported that they had learned to reverse the course of biological clocks in skin cells, introducing special genes. After that, the skin cells developed in the "opposite direction", turning into pluripotent stem cells, which are able to become any tissue of the body. This biotechnological procedure has opened up a vast new area for research and made the possibility of obtaining embryos under laboratory conditions more realistic, bypassing the need to obtain a female egg.

Naturally, this kind of research brings with it not only bright hopes for sufferers, but also serious ethical problems, such as the safety of such research and the possibility of “marginal incest”, when the same person can be a source of both ova and sperm.

Currently, supporters and opponents are already hotly discussing the possibility that the new technology will allow lesbian and gay couples to become biological parents. However, the consortium mentioned above emphasizes that so far scientists do not see ways to get eggs from normal male cells and spermatozoa from ordinary female cells. The obstacles are particularly high in the latter case, because the female cells do not have Y chromosomes that contain the genes necessary for sperm production. Although scientists do not claim that the mentioned problem is in principle insoluble.
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Crosspost via DomNa