Comments on: Sperm Precursor Cells Created From Stem Cells

Sperm Precursor Cells Created From Stem Cells

jason's_planet — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:55:15 -0800

Scientists say they have successfully made immature sperm cells from human bone marrow samples.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:59:59 -0800

The government's recent fertility White Paper proposes a ban on using artificially created sperm or eggs in assisted reproduction. The government here is the UK government. But it won't actually prevent people from using it in other countries. I find this fascinating. Not only could it allow creation of sperm for infertile men, but it could also allow the creation of sperm from women. In theory a woman could impregnate herself! Of course, it depends on whether or not the work pans out, and frankly I imagine that most governments will try to ban crazy reproduction scenarios like the ones I've outlined just as they've tried to ban cloning.

By: IronLizard

IronLizard — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:00:32 -0800

The clone wars will begin soon.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:02:16 -0800

Oh man, that diagram at the bottom of the article looks painful.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:06:24 -0800

Sperm from a bone. Who knew?

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:07:35 -0800

guys ... i suddenly feel a lot less necessary ...

By: fusinski

fusinski — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:13:09 -0800

Thank god my girl still prefers practice over execution.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:19:56 -0800

guys ... i suddenly feel a lot less necessary ... Why? Women like cock. Ok, so they'll eventually be able to get a baby from just about anywhere. Most will still want to reproduce the old fashion way and they'll still want a mate to help raise the child. There'll just be a lot more options.

By: redbeard

redbeard — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:20:05 -0800

Oh man, couple that with a Dude-erus, and you've got crazy reproductive fun times!

By: papakwanz

papakwanz — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:30:43 -0800

Wouldn't a woman impregnating herself be rather dangerous? I mean, it's like inbreeding to the nth power.

By: atrazine

atrazine — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:33:03 -0800

papakwanz, yes indeed. But a lesbian couple could use it to have (female only) children.

By: Frank Grimes

Frank Grimes — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:42:34 -0800

Suddenly my third leg doesn't feel so high and mightly now that my first and second leg can perform some of the same tricks.

By: DU

DU — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:45:52 -0800

*escapes to Mars before robot feminazis purge world of redundant, space-wasting men*

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:52:27 -0800

According to my girlfriend, immature sperm cells have been around for at least 31 years.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:56:07 -0800

well, they should be mature by now.

By: eriko

eriko — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:04:08 -0800

Legal to drink != mature, jonmc.

By: PHINC

PHINC — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:15:08 -0800

Does this give new meaning to getting a boner?

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:16:14 -0800

So now I'm going to have to start worrying about femur size?

By: jonmc

jonmc — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:17:27 -0800

thank's for conjuring up images of drunken sperm cells, eriko. What would drunken sperm do anyway, go to supermarkets and try to fertilize a dozen egss, beat up condoms, that kinda thing?

By: LordSludge

LordSludge — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:27:07 -0800

*escapes to Mars before robot feminazis purge world of redundant, space-wasting men* *hides in cave, anticipating party with hawt cock-starved feminazis*

By: Wonderwoman

Wonderwoman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:35:09 -0800

When I picture immature sperm I see these little guys that keep giggling uncontrolably when ever they realize whet they are.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:57:48 -0800

Anyone ever hear of an anime series called "Vandread"? In that one, in one system men and women have moved to different planets and are at war with one another. Needless to say this represents a problem for reproduction. On Tarak, the men's world, babies come from a factory. They have two parents, both men. A son refers to both of them as "father". On Mejale, the women's world, babies are born normally, but have two female parents. The Mejalian women invented two new words for parental relationships: ohma and fahma. The Fahma is the birth mother, the one who became pregnant. The Ohma is the other parent, who provided genes but was not involved in carrying the child. Maybe we're going to need those words soon, or something like them.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:00:27 -0800

Who needs sperm? Men will be able to make women from a piece of rib.

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:01:43 -0800

Maybe we're going to need those words soon, or something like them. Can I buy some pot from you?

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:03:34 -0800

"Not only could it allow creation of sperm for infertile men, but it could also allow the creation of sperm from _women_." Not necessarily. Maybe I missed something in the article. And I know squat about this stuff. But what if the development of a stem cell into a sperm requires something on the Y chromosome? (Well, half the sperm cells don't have the Y chromosome so I suppose that might answer my question.) If it were possible, such a sperm could be used with one of the woman's eggs for a clone, which would probably work much better than current cloning techniques because it avoids the epigenetic problems. But I was thinking about this earlier from a different direction and that's why I was thinking about an asymmetry. What would really have profound consequences was making new egg cells. A man could be cloned this way as well as cloning a true female version of a man's genome. There's not an equivalent for women, you'd have to use genetic engineering to replace an X chromosome with the Y from the woman's father. Anyway, it seems to me that this is how cloning will be done, assuming the errors introduced by making these sperm are less than the errors introduced by the epigenetic effects we don't understand in conventional cloning. Oh, and of course if you have male and female versions of what otherwise is the same genome, then they could reproduce naturally and make more clones of themselves indefinitely.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:29:44 -0800

So you can't get blood from a stone, but you can get sperm from a bone?

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:53:10 -0800

Can I buy some pot from you? Don't use no drugs. I get high on anime instead.

By: Talanvor

Talanvor — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:58:24 -0800

Wait, are you seriously asking if sperm can be obtained through a bone?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:39:01 -0800

Ethereal Bligh: I think this would be even less effective then regular cloning. The main reason is that DNA is recombinated when when the egg is fertilized. The more similar the DNA is, the more recombination takes place, and this can cause mutations if the DNA is too similar. That's why incest can lead to birth defects. This would be like the ultimate form of birth defects.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:22:38 -0800

Maybe we're going to need those words soon, or something like them. wait until they find the gene for cat ears

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:14:15 -0800

wait until they find the gene for cat ears NOW you're talking...

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:25:25 -0800

"The main reason is that DNA is recombinated when when the egg is fertilized. The more similar the DNA is, the more recombination takes place, and this can cause mutations if the DNA is too similar." That's news to me. But even though... "That's why incest can lead to birth defects." ...might be true because of what you say above, the main cause of birth defects from close relatives is recessive genes.

By: Canard de Vasco

Canard de Vasco — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:34:07 -0800

An ex-geneticist's take: delmoi has the right outcome and EB is right about the mechanism. Self fertilization is mixing two genomes with exactly the same harmful recessive genes, so for every single such gene the parent carries there is a 1/4 chance that the offspring will have two copies of the bad allele. Self fertilisation does not make clones.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:44:47 -0800

"Self fertilisation does not make clones." Okay, I'm really glad to be corrected on that. I'm ashamed to know so little about this.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:59:09 -0800

That... is Protoculture? Ugh!

By: annasbrew

annasbrew — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 18:31:45 -0800

That's nothing... I can make sperm using nothing but a "Girls Gone Wild" video.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:27:31 -0800

Huh, I guess "boner" is now an anatomically-correct term!

By: grapefruitmoon

grapefruitmoon — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:45:25 -0800

Perhaps you all should start paying us equally and stop moaning about "women's rights" now that you're going to be rendered irrelevant in... twenty years or so. We also would like tampons to be free and estrogen added to the drinking water. TIA!

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:31:20 -0800

Isn't there already a lot of estrogen in the drinking water? ISTR the The Pill is causing strange sexual development of freshwater fish and, as we tend to drink the same water the fish do, perhaps people.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:05:25 -0800

Eew! Cooties! Girls have cooties!

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:04:22 -0800

Yeah, but we have bone-sperm.

By: available

available — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:42:42 -0800

As a stem cell biologist, I would seriously caution anyone from reading too much into this. Transdifferentiation is practically a curse in the scientific community, and rightly so as ALL studies that have reported this kind of cellular developmental plasticity for one reason or another have not or cannot be reproduced by other labs. This is the standard in science, reproducibility, and everyone should await confirmation of the work meeting this standard. Case in point, about five years ago some other groups reported that adult hematopoietic stem cells (which are another type of stem cell in bone marrow) could be coaxed into different types of tissues such as neurons. Last year Amy Wagers at Harvard put that one to rest. I am not saying this is not possible, just that the results should definitely be taken with a grain of salt.

By: jason's_planet

jason's_planet — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:22:32 -0800