Scientists claim to have created human sperm in laboratory | Hacker News Reader

Scientists claim to have created human sperm in laboratory

news.bbc.co.uk

26 pointsnreece23 comments

That is truly amazing, it's great that almost weekly I see something created that seemed like it might be decades away.

There are a lot of political/legal consequences of research like this, paternity tests can be used to rob unwitting men if someone decides to create a child without their knowledge. Also, this may eventually change the burden of proof in various forms of assault as the presence of sperm doesn't actually indicate that the individual involved was there.

On the flip side the upside is amazing, allowing sterile fathers to have children. And of course the technology is involved is amazing.

It might also allow lesbian couples to conceive using only their own DNA, if this technology isn't limited to male genes.

You'd still need the Y-chromosome. While not as big as the others, it does contain some genetic material.

Not if they want a daughter.

and it follows then that women will be able to carry their own clones too..

So if lesbians could reproduce...and they could only have daughters...and if it turns out there's a genetic predisposition towards lesbianism...

This is probably a completely ridiculous idea, but I wonder if men might someday be weeded out by "natural" selection.

Why? Male couples should be able to reproduce in the same way --- given enough money to rent out a womb (or the technology to create one). As an added bonus they can also create females.

Some of his early work led to stories about “an end to men”, enabling lesbian couples to have their own biological children without male involvement but, according to Prof Nayernia, these were based on a “misunderstanding”.

“IVD sperm can only be produced from stem cells with male [XY] chromosomes,” he said. “Stem cells with female [XX] chromosomes can be prompted to form early-stage sperm but do not progress further. This demonstrates that the genes on a Y chromosome are essential for meiosis and sperm maturation.”

From: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f16dfe8-6b2f-11de-861d-00144feabd...

"news.ychromasome.com. While not as big as the others, it does contain some material"?

Yup, when the economy is down all the smart people rush back to science ;-).

paternity tests can be used to rob unwitting men if someone decides to create a child without their knowledge

This would be a problem with the law, not a problem with the science.

Just pointing out that as science advances old techniques need to be updated. In no way was I implying that there was any problem with science.

an upside i haven't seen mentioned is birth control - if the technology were perfected, men could sterilize themselves without giving up the possibility of having children.

Are adult stem cells equivalent to embryonal ones?

From how I understood it, they just separated germline cells from very early embryos and let them develop into sperm in an incubator (that is, these germline stem cells would anyway develop into sperm, if left in the embryo).

While this is certainly interesting, for "curing" infertility, wouldn't you still need to find a way how to turn adult stem cells into germline stem cells?

This seems like equivalent problem to "growing hearts in a vat".

However soup of sperms has less structure than a heart. So it might be easier to grow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell

Amazing. This is actually much more interesting than the original post.

Wow... Biology: the ultimate hack... Anyone think that the singularity will be more about biology than computers?

Biology was the first singularity. Something sophisticated enough to reproduce itself, and then improve itself.

There are all sorts of different singularities, in my opinion. Cold fusion would be a singularity. Biological immortality/gene modification in the living is another. Self-improving AI is the singularity that encompasses all of the possible singularities.

So now we can make humans in factories like in Matrix?

You'd still need a uterus.

Plus they didn't do that in the Matrix (as far I can remember from the show it was regular births).

In the film it specifically says "grown" and mentions fields.

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