Scientists Develop Embryos Without Any Male Sperm

A "VIRGIN conception" embryo that requires no male genetic material has been successfully created in Britain for the first time.

A team at the Roslin Institute, who created Dolly the cloned sheep, said today they had already made six embryos using the technique.

The researchers used eggs from a volunteer donor who was due to undergo sterilisation. They hope to use the technique, which has already been used in America, to grow stem cells that could one day be used to cure disease.

Stem cells are "master cells" that in the normal reproductive process go on to form all of the body’s tissues. The Roslin team has created the six embryos, known as parthenotes, to the stage at which they would hope to mine stem cells.

"At the moment we have not managed to get stem cells from these embryos but that continues to be our ambition," Roslin’s Dr Paul de Sousa said.

The Edinburgh-based researchers hope to obtain such cells from the parthenotes and use them to investigate their potential in laboratory research and in medical treatments.

However, they stressed that they would not develop into babies as they would never be implanted in a woman’s womb – the terms of their research licence prohibit that anyway. "We are not creating foetuses with this. But we are creating embryos that can be used for research," Dr de Sousa told the British Association’s Festival of Science in Dublin.

The researchers also believe any children born using the method would run a massive risk of developing severe mental and physical problems because their DNA could become corrupted as they grow older.

"We know from Dolly that as cloned animals get older they develop problems.

But that is not our aim here."

naturally in Under the process, scientists take an egg from a woman donor and add chemicals that cause it to start dividing. Using only the genetic material from the mother, the egg begins to divide as normal and forms a human embryo.

The scientists would not reveal the chemicals used in the process.

Parthenogenesis occurs a number of lower animals. Insects such as bees and ants use it to produce their worker drones. Some larger animals can also reproduce this way – there are a few lizards, for example – but it is rare.

However, the researchers admitted their work is still at an early stage.

"It’s a numbers game," Dr de Sousa said. "It’s just a matter of supply of tissue to be engaged in experimentation."

Some scientists have advocated this type of research on the basis that it could be a more ethically acceptable way to obtain embryonic stem cells.

Working on normal, fertilised embryos is a deeply controversial area.

But others doubt its use on technical grounds, arguing the degree of genetic manipulation required to achieve parthenogenesis makes this route to stem cells an unnecessarily complicated one.