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Comments: 368 +- Science: Human Sperm Produced In the Laboratory on Wednesday July 08, @01:20PM
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duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The BBC is carrying a report from a team of researchers at Newcastle University who claim to have developed a the first 'artificial' human sperm from stem cells. The research, reported in the journal Stem Cells and Development, involved selecting meristematic germ cells from a human embryonic stem cell culture and inducing meiosis, thus producing a haploid gamete. The authors claim that the resulting sperm are fully formed, mature, human sperm cells but the announcement has been greeted with mixed reaction from colleagues who claim the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation."
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I SWEAR (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I SWEAR (Score:5, Funny)
I DIDNT DO IT!
This is Slashdot. That goes without saying.
Parent
This story is just too hard to swallow! (Score:5, Funny)
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Huge waste of tax dollars (Score:5, Funny)
We give these scientists grant money to build labs to work on scientific discoveries. And they turn around and spend all day masturbating in the labs!
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So what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And you almost generated humor there. If you had a lab maybe you could have actually been funny.
The big deal though is, I would assume actually several things
1. It's interesting enough that we can generate them in vitro. How sperm are made is better known than some other cell types, but now even the parts we don't know can be more easily studied, since you can watch it in a microscope easier. Changing conditions to determine what sperm need to develop is also going to be easier in a dish than it would t
Re:So what? (Score:5, Funny)
I have a lab and he *HATES* it when I try to generate sperm.
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:4, Funny)
I wasn't sure where you were going until the end there. That would be entertaining. How long before we'd see the first attempts at defining a person as the result of a straight man's sperm fertilizing a straight female's egg in a marriage. Probably called "Defense of humanity" act.
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wasn't sure where you were going until the end there. That would be entertaining. How long before we'd see the first attempts at defining a person as the result of a straight man's sperm fertilizing a straight female's egg in a marriage. Probably called "Defense of humanity" act.
except gay people can have straight kids, so you'd actually want to somehow ask the sperm (nicely) whether he was gay. Then if he says yes, you'll need to freeze him until scientists develop a cure (for homosexuality or religion, take your pick)
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
You wouldn't want to do that though, since this would basically be incest++. If we ever get the tech to make impregnating yourself with yourself possible, it'll probably get banned because it'd lead to a higher chance of birth defects.
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. Incest++. That's a term that I had hoped would never be invented.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sperm doesn't have pairs of chromesomes, it has only one. But you're right, if you make sperm from female stem cells it could only have an X chromesome, never a Y chromesome, so you'd only get female offspring.
The only inherent loss of genetic diversity would be the Y chromesome, which doesn't have much genetic information on it anyway. The wiki page on the Y chromesome [wikipedia.org] points out that "the human Y chromosome itself contains only 78 working genes, compared to close to 1500 working genes on the X chromosome" and none of the 78 are "vital." For women anyway for obvious reasons.
As long as the female that the sperm are derived from isn't closely related to the female that produces the egg, it wouldn't seem like there would be diversity loss.
Parent
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well... (Score:3, Informative)
There goes the male sex...? :P
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Spend some time around some militant feminists. Yes, yes you do.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
A man and a woman get into an elevator and press the button for the top floor. Halfway up, the elevator stops. The man picks up the emergency phone, and is told that they'll be stuck for at least an hour.
The woman looks at him slyly and says "want to make me feel like a woman?"
"Sure", the man says, immediately taking off his shirt.
"Iron this for me!"
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean? I think we are pretty well trained right now!
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Where's the story? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where's the story? (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8138963.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Parent
Mandatory... (Score:4, Insightful)
I for one, welcome our female overlords. I hope they find me useful and will not use me for food.
Re:Mandatory... (Score:5, Funny)
speak for yourself, I don't mind if I she swallows.
Parent
Misread (Score:5, Funny)
It's about time... (Score:5, Funny)
What's the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
"the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation"
So... they're suitable for producing politicians, lawyers, and bad Slashdot comments?
Ok, let me be the first to say this... (Score:5, Funny)
Every sperm is sacred.
come on, people... (Score:4, Funny)
Every sperm is great.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
God gets quite irate!
Blood==Stem Cells==Babies????? (Score:5, Interesting)
If a woman gets your blood, then she can bear your children? Wow! This will be a great argument for deadbeat dads! Now they can truthfully say "I never had sexual relations with that woman."
Black markets for the blood of rich men . . .
Personal IP rights in your personal blood composition . . .
Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!
One implication (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly, this opens the door to biological children from homosexuals couple. Sure it's been foreseen for a long time, still big big can of worm.
Re:One implication (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it any more a "big can of worm" than infertile hetero couples having children? Are you suggesting that there is some kind of ethical or moral problem with homosexuals having children with this tech that would not apply to heterosexual couples?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides the obvious? Homosexual couples can't currently conceive children. This could grant that ability. That's pretty huge.
Re:One implication (Score:5, Interesting)
Infertile heterosexual couples can't currently conceive children. This could grant that ability. That's huge. So how is the sexual orientation of the couple relevant?
If the OP had said "This will allow people who couldn't have conceived the ability to have children, this opens up a can of worms" then sure - but he (and you) specifically mention the sexual orientation of the couples as being relevant. I'm just trying to understand why.
Is it because gay people would be able to have children that share the dna from 2 same-sex parents? Is it because gay people having kids is an ethical concern? Is it squeamishness about gay folks being able to have children?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Everything you know about creating life is wrong...
1. You need two parents.
False: cloning, X0 conception (Also called Turner syndrome).
2. The parents must be of the opposite sex.
False: Stem cell research can now create both eggs and sperm using DNA from another. DNA from a male can be inserted into an egg, and DNA from a female can be inserted into a sperm, although this has only been accomplished in a laboratory so far, and did not lead to viability.
3. You need a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was going to make a 'Having chromosomes can really bring you Down!' joke but feel the need to point out that humans have 2 * 23 = 46 chromosomes. Having 52 chromosomes means you're a platypus.
Bad news for JAV actors (Score:4, Funny)
This will revolutionize the Japanese Adult Video industry! They won't need to hire 50 guys to make a bukkake video.
One upped (Score:5, Funny)
Moral issues? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ethical concerns? I'm getting tired of silly ideological grounds against genetic manipulation. "Natural" does not mean better," and so long as nobody is hurt by doing this then there's no problem. People worried about ethical concerns over things like this are just luddities afraid of human biological progress. All humans are essentially biological machines, and there are no souls, and the faster people realize that the sooner we can progress past our silly human limitations.
Re:Moral issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, actually "natural" means "millions if not billions of years of testing in the field, resulting in an unbeatable guaranteed fitness". Of course you could have luck and come up with something better. But it is highly unlikely. And you most likely would forget all kinds of little cycles in nature that are needed to keep things working in the long term.
Wait for the second, third or fourth generation showing all kinds of problems, up to being unable to create the next generation at all.
It's way more complicated than you can imagine. We got the tools, but we do not have the brains to use them properly. That is my standpoint. :)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If it has the DNA, its human.
Thats the ONLY THING that ENCODES humanity....
Food for thought, thats all Im saying.
Re:I can't believe it's not butter! (Score:5, Informative)
It actually turns out that's not true -- if you had nothing but the DNA sequence, you could not (even in theory) construct a human from it. For one, the mitochondria organelles have their own genetics independent of our own. The organelles are inherited directly from the mother's cells. For another, how DNA is used and rendered into proteins, etc. is altered by chemicals that are carried along with the cell. If those are stripped away, information is lost.
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The DNA code is universal (Score:3, Informative)
Not true. The way DNA is encoded into aminoacids is a universal code [rcn.com] which follows the same standards in animal, plant, or microorganism cells, with very few exceptions.
Re:Sperm Shortage? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
damaged sperm (Score:3, Funny)
I must be more careful to make sure all of my sperm is fresh. Perhaps there's some way I could extract the old sperm for disposal. Hmm, this will require some thinking.
Re:Wow science is amazing (Score:5, Funny)
One step closer to not having hormonally imbalanced pregnant women...
My wife and I really wish the human reproductive cycle involved external incubation. I'd create a device to post to twitter whenever the baby kicks.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, guess how the "pill" works: By partially simulating the same hormonal imbalance of a pregnant women!
So she is constantly "pregnant" somehow, as long as she takes them.
If you think about, how animals, when pregnant, are way more defensive and aggressive,
and when the "pill" started to be used, this could somehow explain the feminist movement, which started at the same time. ^^
I wonder what would happen, if we would get our women off the "pill" and used condoms for a year.
Maybe it would be worth the lack
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course regular parents take this chance every time the conceive a child.
I'm not sure I see the ethical dilemma in using this technology to allow a couple with fertility problems to reproduce. Sure, in this case you don't know what the odds are, and its possible something will go wrong that couldn't go wrong normally. But everyone who has a child takes the chance that the child might be deformed or sick or die shortly after birth. Its part of the human condition.