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Biotech Science

Start of Life Gene Discovered 305

Posted by Zonk from the sign-me-up-for-six dept.
gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that scientists from the UK and France have may found a gene responsible for controlling the fertilization of a new egg." From the article: "The HIRA gene is involved in the events necessary for the fertilisation that take place once a sperm enters an egg. Faults in this gene might explain why some couples struggle to get pregnant despite having healthy sperm ... Although their work in Nature is based on fruit flies, the same genetic processes are present in humans."
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Start of Life Gene Discovered More

Start of Life Gene Discovered

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  • Well... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this mean that people are willing to acknowledge that fertilization is the start of life for individuals in a species that reproduces via sperm and egg?

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MagicDude ( 727944 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @07:48PM (#13906873)
      No, it means "Start of Life" is a more interesting and eye-catching headline than "Start of formation of diploid zygote and progression to cleavage"
    • Tough answer. What if the egg doesnt implant to begin with (BUT fertilization does occur). Is doing nothing considered murder?

      • Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)

        by WilliamSChips ( 793741 )
        Manslaughter, not murder.

      • Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by yinpeaceyang ( 840072 )
        No. Not in this case. The mother has no control over whether the fertilised egg is implanted into the uterus. In fact, the woman isn't even pregnant until this happens. The egg will die (stop replicating) by itself without the nutrients provided by the uteris walls.

        • Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 )
          Then what about the anti-implantation drugs? "48 hour" drugs given for rape kits do exactly that, and those pills are being attacked as "abortion pills". Usually these are super-dosages of progestrone and estrogen.

          RU486 class drugs are usually after the 72 hour mark when the inseminated egg is already attached to the wall. RU486 causes de-implantation through inhibiting progestrone buildup in the uterine lining.
          • Yes, to some that is considered murder. If you believe that life begins at conception and not some arbitrary point down the road, then that would mean that intentionally creating a condition where a fertilized human egg is going to die is murder. Much like if you actively denied someone warmth durring the winter, making them die of frostbite.

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by oberondarksoul ( 723118 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @07:53PM (#13906886) Homepage

      The question is not whether the freshly-fertilised egg is 'alive', but whether it can be considered human. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas* considered an unborn boy to have a soul at 40 days, and an unborn girl to have one at 80; before those times, he saw the foetus to be non-human. At what point to we declare the bundle of multiplying cells to be human, and at what point are they afforded the same rights? I doubt these new findings will bring much insight to this rather contentious question.

      * A-level Ethics and Philosophy pays off again!

      • The question is not whether the freshly-fertilised egg is 'alive', but whether it can be considered human.

        It's always human, the combination of all 46 chromosomes upon fertilization establishes that. I've heard some, when arguing for the right of arbortion, call the very early stages of development a "pile of goo" which always struck me as a derogatory understanding of the life. The real question is when does a human gain its basic rights, and specifically the right to life (i.e the right not to be killed).
        • No - by this definition a cheek-scraping is "human". All the chromosomes are in there, and yet we are heartless enough to conduct brutal experiments, experiments that KILL these cells, in high school biology laps all across the world.

          Of course, this leads quickly into the "potential" for human life debate, which gets pretty tangly pretty soon. Even more so as cloning develops -- in another decade maybe those cheek cells may be just as much "potential" humans as a normal fertilized egg (many of which spont

          • It's totally dependant on another, unquestionable human and rights-endowed being, the mother. Can we legitmately force her to sacrifice her own health, risk her own life, etc. for the fetus?

            No. In fact, most abortion laws that are drafted do have exceptions for life-threatening instances. They still get struck down though. Thus, the question is not the one you pose. The question is is abortion to be treated as simply another form of birth control?

            Even if the fetus were a little curled-up totally-awar

      • that we as a society can define death as when the higher level brain is no longer functioning AND has not capability to do so again. The smart way to define human life would seem to be the opposite of that definition. And yet, there are so many who try to change that. Some by creating a none life (pro-choice), when it is obvious that it is (at the very least, if the fetus can live outside the womb AND has higher brain function, then it must be alive). Then there are others who wish to extend the creation of
      • Genetically, there's no question. What other species did you have in mind?
      • The early Christian church held that ensoulement occurs at the moment of conception. For instance, the early Church father, Tertullian (160 - 220 CE), wrote: "Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (Apology 27).
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoulment [wikipedia.org]
    • If you are alluding to the abortion/stem-cell/IVF debates, the question isn't really weather life begins at conception, but rather moral personhood.

      I would have to say that a fertilized egg is "alive" by any meaningful standard you can come up with. Bacteria are indisputably alive, and a fertilized egg is even more complex and larger. The cell has potential to reproduce and is metabolizing, which are often used as tests as to whether something is alive.

      The three debates I mentioned above are not tec
    • > Does this mean that people are willing to acknowledge that fertilization is the start of life for individuals in a species that reproduces via sperm and egg?

      Weren't the sperm and egg already alive?

      For test tube babies, is it ok to throw away the egg and sperm just before you put them together, but wrong a half-second later? A few chemical reactions make all the difference?

  • Maybe it's coincidence (Score:5, Funny)

    by threedognit3 ( 854836 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @07:52PM (#13906881)
    So if I mate with a fruit fly and she doesn't conceive....I'll know why.

  • This just in (Score:3, Funny)

    by mnemonic_ ( 164550 ) <jamec@u m i ch.edu> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @07:54PM (#13906889) Homepage Journal
    God is dead.
  • That is the one gene that could be turned into the ultimate-slow motion terrorist weapon of genocide. Take something like HIV, and adapt it to do "gene therapy" and kill this gene for childbirth for individuals that appear to have the undesirable genetic profile of being "white caucasians" and, and... wait. Wait 100 years. Wait another 100 years. Keep releasing this virus into the wild in whatever method you care. What do you get? Eventually you get a population of people whose birthrate declines so much
  • the faulty sperm: "Heelllpp Meeeeeeeee"

  • Therapy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jtroutman ( 121577 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @07:59PM (#13906908)
    One wonders if gene therapy is a possibility. Could this gene be "repaired" allowing couples previously unable to conceive to have children? If so it may spell the end to births of "litters" as those are mostly due to fertility drugs.

    • Re:Therapy? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pin_gween ( 870994 )
      This would require a change in germ cells in testicles -- a daunting prospect. And there are two lives you affect doing this.
      1. The father has changes to testicles (cringes at thought of just HOW you get the new DNA in there).
      2. Any changes you make to the sperm would be passed onto the fetus. Doesn't matter whether change is dominant or recessive, if it is in the sprem that fertilizes the egg, it's part of the fetus.

  • Another term for this gene might be... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29, 2005 @08:22PM (#13906977)
    "bootstrap code"...

    Anyone know if it's an Award or a Phoenix? :-)

    (In any case, the ramifications are stupendous - literally
    seems that we're learning something new about genes every day,
    like the story yesterday about Black Death/Plague and HIV)

  • Praise God! (Score:4, Funny)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @08:55PM (#13907071)
    Praise God, who in His infinite wisdom and omnipotence, used the same genetic methodology in fruit flies as He used in that created in His image.

    He works in mysterious ways, so don't bother to wonder why He couldn't optimize the system in each species.

  • Start a life gene? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where do I sign up?
  • Is HIRA intended as wordplay on HERA [mythweb.com], the wife of Zeus and Queen of the Olympian deities? I ran a quick search and found no such suggestion. Hera is an ancient mother goddess worshipped as the source of life. She is an aspect of the White Goddess whose three representations are a young mother (colour blue), a warring matriarch (colour red), a death hag (colour black).
  • Just as long as Dr. Van Parijs, formerly of MIT's biology department had absolutely no involvement with collecting the data.

  • Ka-ching!... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SysKoll ( 48967 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @10:35PM (#13907381)

    This means that modern medicine will soon be able to detect infertile couples by testing for the HIRA gene and help these couples reproduce, for example through early in-vitro fertilization (early while the woman is young and has little pregnancy risk).

    Of course, this means that the descendants will also carry HIRA, thus greatly increasing their chances they'll require assistance to reproduce.

    This is like a repeat-customer wet dream for a clinic chain owner, you know. When the IVF clinic owner's kids will inherit the clinic, they'll also inherit a sound customer base.

    It reminds me of these PC repairs technicians that just reinstall Windows on the same spyware-laden machine every month instead of training their customers to use Linux or a Mac. Repeat business.

  • They should patent it ... just to see the Pope go berzerk on television.
  • Now now, you can't just go about saying that a fertilized egg is 'life'.

    That could lead you down a path that might interfere with a womans right to choose what to do with her body.

    Utopia forbid.

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