This is some freaky shit..
CLICK HERE
"Mouse with two mothers and no father marks a first for mammals
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 22/04/2004)
A mouse has been born that has two mothers, but no father. The animal, named Kaguya - which could prove as controversial as Dolly the cloned sheep - shows for the first time that a particular kind of "virgin birth" is possible in mammals - and thus people.
The method, perfected by a team at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, with colleagues in Japan and Korea, marks the second advance, after cloning, that appears to make males redundant.
"This is very exciting and impressive," said Prof Ian Wilmut, head of the team that cloned Dolly.
Although the birth is an amazing feat - so much so that science does not yet have an accepted name for the technique - Prof Wilmut and other scientists stressed that the practical implications were obscure, since the method was even more complex, inefficient and unsafe than cloning.
Sexless reproduction abounds in nature, but not in mammals. Although unfertilised mouse eggs can be jolted into dividing with chemicals or electric shocks, the resulting embryos do not reach term.
Today, in the journal Nature, Dr Tomohiro Kono and colleagues describe how they produced live female mice, the first being Kaguya, without any need for sperm and male chromosomes.
Parthenogenesis - reproduction without fertilisation - was thought impossible in mammals due to imprinting, a mechanism that turns genes on and off depending on whether they come from the mother or father. At least 40 genes necessary for development are thought to be regulated in this way.
Rather than combine egg and sperm, Dr Kono combined a female imprinted genetic code from an older egg with a "male-like" imprinted female genetic code. The latter was created from the genome of a young egg, free of maternal imprinting. To masculinise it, Dr Kono used genetic engineering to remove a gene (H19) so that there was no H19 activity - as is normally the case in the father's genetic code.
Dr Kono told The Telegraph that it may be difficult to do this experiment in other species but it "is a possibility" in some domestic animals. He would not be drawn on whether two women could have a baby this way.
"This is an incredible achievement," said Prof Azim Surani of the University of Cambridge. But he added that it was too complex to be used on people.
Dr Anne Ferguson-Smith of Cambridge University said: "This paper does not mean that males are obsolete - the requirement for paternal chromosomes for normal development is still with us."
The scary part is that they can only produce a female mouse.. watch out guys
