Word: miceli
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What a team of researchers led by Tomohiro Kono at the Tokyo University of Agriculture did was create a genetically modified strain of mice in which the females produce eggs with an imprint that is somewhat father-like. Then, in a key step, the team extracted immature eggs from the newborn mice of this strain. Why is this important? The immature eggs had the most paternal imprint of all because they had not yet had time to sense that they were living in a female. By fusing these father-like eggs with normal, mother eggs, the Japanese researchers were able...
...wasn't easy. After nearly 600 attempts, only two baby mice (known as pups) survived. One was sacrificed for genetic analysis. The other, dubbed Kaguya, grew up, mated the usual way and produced two litters. Despite the fact that Kaguya bore offspring, "we really don't know how healthy she is," says Marisa Bartolomei, an imprinting expert and Howard Hughes investigator at the University of Pennsylvania...
...researchers' method was familiar to anyone who has been following the cloning parade from sheep to mice to other animals over the past several years. After harvesting 242 eggs from 16 female volunteers, Hwang and Moon removed the eggs' genetic material and replaced it with DNA extracted from adult cells donated by the same women. They then used tiny bursts of electricity to fuse together the donor material and egg. Nourished in dishes, 30 of the hybrid eggs developed into blastocysts--balls of hundreds of cells that represent one of the earliest stages of fetal development. When couples undergo...
...study that will cause the hearts of bald men everywhere to skip a beat, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine report they have coaxed stem cells to grow new hair, at least in mice. The team hopes to do the same for human scalps but cautions that stem-cell treatments for hair loss--hold on to your hats--are at least a decade away...
Even if they do, it will be a while before anyone benefits from this research. Scientists will have to figure out how to purify ovarian stem cells, then transfer them into depleted ovaries to see if they can restart egg production--first in mice, then, if possible, in humans. But if they can, Tilly envisions all sorts of benefits. You might extract the cells and freeze them, and if a woman got cancer, you could reintroduce them after chemotherapy shut down her ovaries. Or you might freeze some of the vigorous stem cells in a young woman so she would...