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Medicine

Scientists Created Male and Female Cells From a Single Person 131

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Most people have two sex chromosomes, either two X's or an X and a Y, which give rise to female or male biological attributes on a spectrum. Studies suggest these chromosomes also have much broader effects, contributing to processes that include immune system function, neuronal development, disease susceptibility and reactions to drugs. But scrutinizing the specific role of X and Y chromosomes is challenging. With current tools, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of genes versus hormones, for example. Now scientists have devised a tool that could overcome this obstacle -- by generating XX and XY cells from a single person for the first time. This unique set of cells could help researchers tackle long-standing questions about how sex chromosomes affect disease and the role they play in early development.

Benjamin Reubinoff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Hadassah Medical Center in Israel, and his team began the project to overcome barriers facing investigations of sex differences in humans. Currently there are two major ones, according to Reubinoff: the difficulty of separating chromosomal and hormonal effects and the inability to pinpoint the effects of X and Y chromosomes while ruling out contributions from the rest of a person's genetic makeup. "The main reason for doing this study was the lack of a good model to study differences between males and females in humans," Reubinoff says. "There have been animal models, but a model in humans was not available." To create such a model, Reubinoff, his former M.D. and Ph.D. student Ithai Waldhorn and their colleagues first obtained white blood cells previously collected from a person with Klinefelter syndrome, a condition in which male individuals are born with an extra X chromosome. The cells came from the repositories of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, where people donate samples for use in a wide range of biomedical research projects. The donor had a rare "mosaic" form of the condition, in which some of their cells had three sex chromosomes (XXY), some had two X chromosomes, and some had one X and one Y. The researchers reprogrammed all three cell types into induced pluripotent stem cells, which have the capacity to self-renew and to develop into neurons, muscle cells or other cell types.

Ultimately the team generated XX and XY cells that -- apart from their sex chromosomes -- were genetically identical. The researchers then conducted a series of experiments replicating findings from prior studies with other models. For example, they confirmed previously reported differences in genes that were turned on in XX or XY cells. They also coaxed their stem cells to develop into immature versions of neurons and found evidence of previously reported sex differences in early neural development. "It was reassuring to see that the model really shows differences between the sexes that were reported from other systems," Reubinoff says. The findings were published last month in Stem Cell Reports.
"This is a very well-designed study that validates the notion that sex differences start early in development -- and that they depend on the sex chromosomes because that's the only thing that can account for those differences," says Nora Engel, a professor of cancer and cell biology at Temple University.
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Scientists Created Male and Female Cells From a Single Person

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  • Most people have two sex chromosomes, either two X's or an X and a Y, which give rise to female or male biological attributes on a spectrum.

    Unless they're not sensitive to androgen hormones for whatever reason.

    • by c-A-d ( 77980 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @01:19AM (#63149664)

      Which is pretty rare. Estimates are 2 to 5 per 100,000, or 0.005% of all males are completely insensitive to androgen with partial insensitivy estimated at the same rate. That means there's about 400,000 people globally (out of 8 billion) who are affected by this. I think we can call this an anomaly, or "edge case".

      • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

        0.005% of all males are completely insensitive to androgen

        I would think that the percentage is 0%, because people completely insensitive to androgen are virtually always assigned female gender at birth.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The important thing here is that they shouldn't be disadvantaged or discriminated against for that condition. Much smaller and much larger groups have been treated badly in the past.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by sabbede ( 2678435 )
          No, but it would also be wrong to try and alter society to adapt to 0.005% of the population. Wild outliers are going to have problems no matter what, and it would not be fair, practical or wise to explicitly accomodate every possible variation. Keep going down that road and you'll end up banning keyboards and steering wheels because on rare occasions children are born without arms.
          • by armada ( 553343 )
            Exactly, and we don't go around saying that we are on a biped to quadraped "spectrum".
            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              It should be noted that a quite small minority - less than 0.5% of people - have one or no legs. Is it ok to not accommodate that variation because it's rare?

          • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:05AM (#63150098) Journal

            No, but it would also be wrong to try and alter society to adapt to 0.005% of the population

            Depends on the adaptation. The the adaptation is to not be an utter arsehole and discriminate against them, not discriminate against them and etc, then no it is not wrong to alter society to adapt to them. Because a society that is prepared to hurt 0.005% just for kicks doesn't stop there. They'll happily hurt lots of smaller and larger groups for different supposed reasons.

            Keep going down that road and you'll end up banning keyboards and steering wheels because on rare occasions children are born without arms.

            I wonder if you'll get the "stupidest post on Slashdot today" prize?

            • It depends on both the burden to society and the percentage affected. For such a small percentage, adaptations should be so minor as to be unnoticed by anybody but the tiny percentage benefiting from them. Adding braille to traffic lights, and textured paving at crossings strikes an extra excellent balance. Requiring new language and social conventions be adopted by everybody would be entirely unreasonable.

            • We already do alter society to adapt to the 0.005%. Think of top athletes, they fall outside the normal limits of training some ordinary joe off the street and hold enormous influence, some come close to becoming senators if they can play football well enough.
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            How do you get from "accommodate" to "make things unusable for everyone"?

            In the specific case we are talking about, the accommodation is "don't be an arsehole to that person". Is that too much to ask?

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Would that be the definition of non-binary?

  • Seems like a winning strategy. Lmfao

    • by ffkom ( 3519199 )

      Seems like a winning strategy. Lmfao

      Only until your offspring starts to learn about the downsides of inbreeding. But then again, this did not keep "royals" from practicing this for centuries.

  • by LondoMollari ( 172563 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @12:41AM (#63149650) Homepage

    And give myself the hardest pounding in history because I am so fâ(TM)ing hot.

  • by twosat ( 1414337 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @01:39AM (#63149676)

    First two verses to the tune of Home On The Range

    Oh, give me a clone
    Of my own flesh and bone
    With its Y chromosome changed to X.
    And after it's grown,
    Then my own little clone
    Will be of the opposite sex.

    Clone, clone of my own,
    With its Y chromosome changed to X.
    And when I'm alone
    With my own little clone
    We will both think of nothing but sex.

    • OK so you could have what amounts to an identical twin of the opposite sex! Doesn't mean you _have to_ jump into bed straight away... There is a certain amount of stigma against siblings reproducing together, ancient Egyptian royalty aside. With non-human animals there are also a number of ways in which it's avoided, and for good reason.
  • Some people do it all their own
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    https://www.webmd.com/children... [webmd.com]
  • What could possibly go wrong?
  • On a spectrum... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @04:14AM (#63149810) Homepage

    Barring unusual mutations or diseases, XX or XY is a binary choice. There is no "spectrum". Biology doesn't care about political correctness.

    Obviously, other developmental and psychological factors come into play, but physical biology is - again, barring genetic disease - either male or female.

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:15AM (#63150126) Journal

      Barring unusual mutations or diseases, XX or XY is a binary choice. There is no "spectrum".

      Barring all the cases where it isn't binary, it's binary.

      Barring all the cases where you're not a moron, you're a moron all the time.

      Biology doesn't care about political correctness.

      Quite so. Biology doesn't care about your political/religious group's desire to cram things into neat, human-shaped categories. Biology is astoundingly messy and unreasonably complex no matter how much your politics wish it was not so. But as you said, it is not politically correct.

    • by Nugoo ( 1794744 ) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @11:21AM (#63150422)
      The summary does not claim that the sex chromosomes are on a spectrum. It claims that "female or male biological attributes" are on a spectrum. Your post is attacking a strawman.
  • Which bathrooms are they supposed to use? #desantis2024 /s

  • I was hoping to find insight into the science described in TFS. It seems that every single comment is about some sort of social perception of people with gender irregularities. My bad, I forgot this is Slashdot.

  • Only works on people who self identify as 'they'.

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