If gene editing is taken forward in the manner scientists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University have shown, reproduction may be possible without women.
The trick goes like this: Inside our DNA, there are special regions called imprinting control regions, or ICRs. These regions work like switches that turn certain genes on or off during development.
In normal reproduction, one set of genes comes from the mother and one from the father. These two sets are not identical — some genes are meant to be active only when they come from the mother, and others from the father. The ICRs help manage this balance.
When all the DNA comes from just one parent, the balance is lost. This can cause serious problems in the developing embryo, often making it impossible for the embryo to survive.
But what if we can edit ICRs so that they mimic the natural balance?
The Shanghai University scientists tried this successfully, creating mice with two fathers and no mother.
This kind of asexual reproduction is called androgenesis. The scientists injected sperms from two male mice into mouse eggs, whose nucleus — that contains the mother’s DNA — had been removed. Then they edited 7 ICRs and implanted the egg into female mice.
Three of 259 embryos developed; three live mice were born. Two of them lived to be healthy and went on to have babies of their own.
A world populated by lab-made DNA? Anything is possible.