Soon you can be a mother without the need of your partner's sperm (or another man)

For some time now, thanks to sperm donations and fertility treatments, a woman can become a mother without having a partner, or without her husband's sperm. The baby that is born has a mother, but no known biological father, since the genetic load corresponds to an anonymous donor. Well, this may have the days counted, because scientists have achieved something unimaginable: that soon you can be a mother without human sperm.

A solution to infertility

The advance has been the work of Chinese scientists, who have published their work in the magazine Cell Stem Cell, in which they have worked with the intention of looking for a different solution to the infertility problem that many couples suffer.

It is estimated that 15% of couples are infertile and many of them are due to an insufficiency in the production of viable sex cells, that is, a deficit of sperm production or a reduced mobility of these. It is true that there are solutions such as those we have mentioned: make use of donor sperm, in case it is impossible to get a pregnancy with the sperm of the man, but that does not mean that new options may appear, such as this one that we are advancing today, whose sperm would carry the father's genetic load.

Sperm from stem cells

To the question and where do they get them? Tell them that they get them from embryonic stem cells, although for now they belong to mice, because it is with them that they have done all the experiments. From these, they managed to transform them into primordial germ cells, which are those from which the process of meiosis produces sperm.

To date it had been partially achieved, but now not only a correct meiosis has been achieved, but the production of gametes capable of producing offspring. To do this, they made use of testicular tissue from genetically modified mice to produce high levels of testicular retinoic acid, responsible for initiating the creation of sperm, along with various sex hormones, making the stem cells specific to enable the creation of gametes.

The sperm achieved were used to fertilize ovules of mice, which were implanted in female mice, making them become embryos. Time passed, gave birth to healthy offspring. The mice born lived to adulthood and they were able to have their own offspring, as confirmation that the process had been a success.

When can it be done with humans?

The next step is to start studying how to implement this technique in humans, basically because we cannot be genetically modified to produce more retinoic acid, although the authors of the work consider that the achievement is important enough to serve as a starting point for further research.

And what implications will it have?

Well if it were achieved, the possibility of creating sperm with the genetic load of a man without them having been created in his testicles (a few months ago a French laboratory announced that he could be able to create them with half the genetic load of man) . Come on, laboratory sperm that replace those that a man is not able to produce. If it is a success, if they succeed, parents will have to deal with the idea that their child will be theirs, but that born of an "artificial" sperm, although I think it will always be better than dealing with the idea that the child born is not carrying your genes, but those of a donor.

What do you think?