Patter of tiny claws brings virgin births in humans a step closer

The prospect of women conceiving without men has moved a step closer after ­Chinese researchers produced a baby mouse from an unfertilised egg for the first time.

A mouse egg was first stimulated to become a ‘one-cell embryo’ that contained two identical sets of genetic information, or genomes, inherited from the mother.

The prospect of women conceiving without men has moved a step closer after ­Chinese researchers produced a baby mouse from an unfertilised egg for the first time.

Parthenogenesis, the Ancient Greek term for a virgin birth, is used by scientists to describe a process where eggs spontan­eously divide, without fertilisation by sperm, to form an embryo.

Some lizards and honey bees can procreate like this and it was recorded last year for the first time in a bird. However, in ­humans and other mammals such embryos invariably die. An important reason for this is that a mammal needs to inherit two sets of genetic information, one from the father and one from the mother. An embryo that comes only from an unfertilised egg and contains only genetic information from the mother is doomed to be unviable.

In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the ­National Academy of Sciences, a group of researchers describe achieving parthenogenesis in a mammal – a laboratory mouse – for the first time. A mouse egg was first stimulated to become a “one-cell embryo” that contained two identical sets of genetic information, or genomes, inherited from the mother. This has been possible for decades.

However, the researchers then modified one of the genomes, ­editing it so that it looked like the genetic code that would normally have come from the father.

The DNA itself was not altered. Instead, the researchers edited what are known as epigenetic methyl markers – groups of chemicals that attach to DNA and act a little like volume switches, controlling the activity of individual genes. This approach allowed them to solve the problem of “genomic imprinting” – which causes genes to be active or silent, depending on whether they are inherited from the mother or the father.

The Times