Chinese Team Creates Two-Father Mice With 12% Birth Rate Using 20 CRISPR Edits
Updated
Updated · Futura · Aug 25
Chinese Team Creates Two-Father Mice With 12% Birth Rate Using 20 CRISPR Edits
2 articles · Updated · Futura · Aug 25
Summary
A Beijing team reported mice with DNA from two male parents after using CRISPR to alter 20 imprinted genes, lifting survival to birth to about 12% from the roughly 1% seen in earlier work.
The method fertilized DNA-free eggs with sperm from one male, edited the resulting embryonic stem cells, then combined those cells with sperm from a second male and implanted embryos into surrogate females.
More than half of the pups died before adulthood, and survivors were sterile, shorter-lived, larger than normal, and showed malformations and behavioral disorders.
The researchers said the work helps probe parental imprinting—genes that must carry maternal and paternal marks for normal mammalian development—and may next be tested in primates.
The team said applying the approach to human cells or embryos would be unethical because it requires gene alteration and can produce unhealthy offspring.