Can artificial insemination allow a child to have two mothers?

[Fanghur]

I was watching an episode of the Atheist Experience the other day, and one of the hosts who identifies herself as a lesbian mother (her 'daughter' is biologically her partner's child through artificial insemination). It made me wonder whether or not it would be possible for medical science to allow artificial insemination in which, biologically, the resulting daughter would effectively have two biological mothers; or a mother and a female father if you prefer to think about it that way?

 

What I'm basically asking is if it is possible to take a donar sperm and remove its X or Y chromosome, similar to how we are able to remove the chromosome from an ovum, and then insert the X chromosome of one of the women, and then use that sperm to artificially inseminate the other woman? If that were possible it would seem to me to be an effective way for lesbian couples to have children.

 

Can anyone tell me whether medical science has advanced enough, or whether it is even possible to perform a procedure like this? And if it is possible, are there any significant hurdles that would need to be overcome? And if itsn't possible to modify the sperm in the way I'm suggesting, is there any other way that this could conceivably be done?

[MonDie]

I'll do some speculating. I'm only a student.

 

Why would they replace one chromosome rather than perform a full nuclear tranplant? A nuclear transplant is the removal and replacement of the nucleus of an egg or zygote, and it's used in cloning.

In the case of a sperm nuclear transplant, it would be a haploid nucleus from the father's egg. The engineered sperm would then fertilize the mother's egg like normal.

In the case of a zygote nuclear transplant, the two egg nuclei might have to be fused artificially outside of the cellular environment. This option seems like it would be quite feasible.

 

I considered whether they could insert the haploid nucleus directly into an egg, but I don't know if they could get the egg to complete meiosis II without a sperm cell. Hold on... Why does meiosis II necessary? I think I need to read up on this some more

Edited December 7, 2012 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[iNow]

Yes, the egg of one woman can be removed, fertilized with donor sperm, then implanted into another woman. So one woman provides the egg, another carries it to term, hence two biological mothers of the child.

[Doc.ToBe]

It's quite impossible sounding.
Inow

 

Yes, the egg of one woman can be removed, fertilized with donor sperm, then implanted into another woman. So one woman provides the egg, another carries it to term, hence two biological mothers of the child.

Egg of one woman is removed is quite different from saying that egg of woman is taken out

 

Suppose if hen lays egg and it is incubated by man it does not mean man and hen are parents.

the thing you talk to that way the second woman does not provide any genes therefore in my view she is not a biological mother. Like using the technique MOET we can transplant animal fertilized eggs of a cow or buffalo in animals like a female goat or closely related animals. This does not make the goat a biological mother in my view.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Doc.ToBe

[Fanghur]

Okay, clearly I did not explain myself well enough. I am not talking about simply taking an egg from one partner, fertilizing it via artificial insemination, and then implanting it into the uterus of the other partner. In that case the second partner would NOT be the child's biological mother. Let me put it a different way; in human sexual reproduction, the ovum carries a single X chromosome from the mother, and hence half of the child's genetic material comes from the mother's DNA. The sperm carries either an X or a Y chromosome from the father, and hence the other half of the child's genetic material comes from the father's DNA.

 

Now, then, what I want to know is if it is possible to take a donar sperm and remove the X or Y chromosome from the sperm that came from the man, and put in the X chromosome from the second woman in its place. Therefore you would have an ovum from one partner, carrying the X chromosome from that partner, and you would have a sperm carrying the X chromosome from the second partner. Now, if that sperm were used to fertilize the egg of the first partner, the resulting child would have 50% of its DNA from one woman, and the other 50% of its DNA from the second woman. So that child would quite literally have two BIOLOGICAL mothers, and hence the lesbian couple could quite literally have a child that is there's in every respect that any of us are the biological child of both our parents.

 

Now then, discuss. Is this possible, or simply not yet feasible?

[iNow]

It's quite impossible sounding.

Inow

 

Egg of one woman is removed is quite different from saying that egg of woman is taken out

 

Suppose if hen lays egg and it is incubated by man it does not mean man and hen are parents.

 

Humans don't lay eggs the same way as hens do, so that's not a terribly helpful analogy nor does it negate my point. What I put forth above has already happened and tends to happen regularly with lesbian couples who wish to have children together. They are both the "biological mothers."

 

I am not talking about simply taking an egg from one partner, fertilizing it via artificial insemination, and then implanting it into the uterus of the other partner. In that case the second partner would NOT be the child's biological mother.

Of course she would be. She just wouldn't have supplied the egg. It all depends on how you define biological, I suppose, but it's pretty commonly accepted that both women in these situations are the biological parents.

Let me put it a different way; in human sexual reproduction, the ovum carries a single X chromosome from the mother, and hence half of the child's genetic material comes from the mother's DNA. The sperm carries either an X or a Y chromosome from the father, and hence the other half of the child's genetic material comes from the father's DNA.

 

Now, then, what I want to know is if it is possible to take a donar sperm and remove the X or Y chromosome from the sperm that came from the man, and put in the X chromosome from the second woman in its place.

You don't even need to make it that complex, AFAIK. You could insert the dna from the second woman directly into the egg of the other and then stimulate fertilization through electric means. The science is similar to cloning. Insert dna with pipette, fertilize with an electric current, let gestation begin.

 

I will say I'm not an expert on this, but I'm fairly certain it's no where near as impossible as you seem to think. It's just another type of cloning, really.

[MonDie]

Fanghur, the X and Y (the sex chromosomes) are only two of the 46 chromosomes. The rest are called autosomes. Models of mitosis or meiosis often show a lower number of chromosomes for simplicity. I can teach you the basics right here if you would like.

 

These 46 chromosomes can be divided into 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes. In each pair, one chromosome came from each parent. The X and Y (or X and X) are one pair of homologous chromosomes.

 

It's important that you don't confuse chromosomes with chromatids. The X shaped structure is still one chromosome; the two intersecting strands are the chromatids, and they contain identical DNA (unless mutations occurred). The sister chromatids are separated in mitosis. After mitosis, each new cells has only one chromatid for each chromosome. The new cells have to copy those chromatids before the next cell division. This is how the cells in your body keep dividing.

 

Unlike chromatids, homologous chromosomes have dissimilar DNA sequences. One contains the DNA sequences from mom, and one contains the DNA sequences from dad. These are what you are looking at when you look at a karyotype. Google images that word. Notice that the chromosomes are X-shaped. Sometimes you have to look close to notice it. They are X-shaped because they have two sister chromatids. However, the numbers denote homologous pairs of chromosomes, not individual chromosomes.

 

Meiosis is the cell division that results in sperm and egg cells. Unlike mitosis, meiosis separates the homologous chromosomes. Meiosis has two phases: meiosis I and meiosis II. In meiosis I, the homologous chromosomes separate. In meiosis II, the chromatids separate. Meiosis results in haploid cells.

A diploid (di- Greek two) nucleus contains pairs of homologous chromosomes, so it has all 46. A haploid (hapl- Greek simple, single) nucleus, which only contains 23 chromosomes, has only one chromosome from each pair. Fertilization, the fusion of a sperm with an egg, involves the fusion of two haploid nuclei into a diploid nucleus.

 

When I considered that we might do a nuclear (nuc- Greek, as in nucleus) transplant on a sperm, I was only speculating. As far as I know, nuclear transplants are for eggs and zygotes. You might want to look at a simple model of the cloning procedure to get an idea of what iNow is talking about.

 

---

 

I was looking for a good diagram of the process of (non-theraputic) cloning, and I found this. http://www.clonesafety.org/cloning/facts/process/

Apparently, you can clone by removing the nucleus from an egg cell, then fusing that empty egg with a diploid somatic (soma- Greek body) cell. Thus the offspring could have the mitochondrial DNA of one lesbian and the nucleus DNA of the other lesbian.

(Note to Fanghur: I only described the DNA in the nucleus. There is also DNA in the mitochondrion, but I don't know much about it. Mitochondrial DNA is a subject for students who go deeper into cell biology.)

 

Yes, the egg of one woman can be removed, fertilized with donor sperm, then implanted into another woman. So one woman provides the egg, another carries it to term, hence two biological mothers of the child.

Wouldn't such a procedure be problematic? When clones are born from surrogates, they often have health problems. If I recall correctly, it's because the DNA isn't totally compatible with the surrogate mother's DNA.

It might also be argued that deleterious epigenetic changes occur in the lab.

 

Your last post gave me another idea. If females didn't have limitied numbers of eggs, we could harvet a bunch of haploid nuclei from the father, insert the haploid nuclei into eggs of the mother, then fertilize the dinuclear eggs with sperm. Eventually, one of them might fuse with the inserted nucleus rather than the sperm's nucleus. The egg's that don't work out could be harvested for stem cells... Ahh, the miracle of not quite life.

Edited December 8, 2012 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[iNow]

My understanding is that it's not that problematic since it's not actually a clone, it's just that the process used to fertilize and implant is similar. My understanding on this subject is also limited.

[MonDie]

 

Earlier experiments with mouse and human cells had revealed that immature sperm that still contain two copies of each chromosome could fertilize an egg and produce live births--the egg is evidently able to expel two extra sets of chromosomes before proceeding with normal development.

 

Fertility researchers Orly Lacham-Kaplan and Rob Daniels of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, wondered if normal diploid somatic cells--a cell other than a sperm or an egg that has two copies of each chromosome--could also fertilize an egg under the right conditions [...]

 

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2001/07/12-01.html

 

 

 

That article is from 2001. Considering the the wide variety of approaches that could be taken, I wonder why nobody has developed a way to do this yet. Maybe it's not considered important. Maybe there aren't enough people who want it (lesbians are a minority). Maybe social conservative ideals are inhibiting such research.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[imatfaal]

 

 

That article is from 2001. Considering the the wide variety of approaches that could be taken, I wonder why nobody has developed a way to do this yet. Maybe it's not considered important. Maybe there aren't enough people who want it (lesbians are a minority). Maybe social conservative ideals are inhibiting such research.

Not so much socially conservative ideals - just a well functioning Medical research ethics committee. The problem with research like this is that there is no halfway house - no empirical way to determine likelihood of success other than the attempt itself. And with the bringing to term of human children you have the greatest responsibility in science - if at full term you find that your predictions were awry you have an ethical problem beyond compare. you could find that the children born via this method lack certain developmental triggers, cannot function normally, have decreased quality of life etc... It is completely unacceptable to take the risk - and it is very hard to find any way to lower or understand the risk without taking the risk and seeing what happens.

 

we cannot accurately predict phenotype, nor understand functioning of the majority of gene combinations - let alone make these predictions for a highly unusual genetic composition; and the test runs cannot be on living children - but that is the only real test.

[jp255]

This is an interesting topic. Will it be possible for someone to have two biological fathers or mothers? I think the answer is yes in the future, but we need more knowledge and the experimental techniques are not there yet.

 

To the TC, the biological father and mother both donate approx 50% of their genetic material to offspring. What you are asking will not result in two same sex biological mothers which both donate approx 50% because you want one of the mother's only to have their sex chromosome replace the sperm donor's sex chromosome. Why not replace all of the sperm's DNA with the mothers'?

 

The biggest techincal problem with same sex biological parents is, I believe, the issue of correcting genomic imprinting. Imprinting patterns are erased and reset in a specific manner, which differs between each sex. Having two sets of gentic material both imprinted as "male" will most likely result in miscarriage (guessing). Two males should be easier than two women as monday said nuclear transfer is easier to do in an egg. I don't have a citation (not even searched, no time to now), but I believe there have been experiments that have done this in animals, I can't remember what the outcome was for same imprinting pattern animals but it wasn't good.

 

That and ethics are the only things preventing it, otherwise two biological fathers should be possible (if imprinting wasn't a problem, we could probs do it these days).

[rocket7777]

I was watching an episode of the Atheist Experience the other day, and one of the hosts who identifies herself as a lesbian mother (her 'daughter' is biologically her partner's child through artificial insemination). It made me wonder whether or not it would be possible for medical science to allow artificial insemination in which, biologically, the resulting daughter would effectively have two biological mothers; or a mother and a female father if you prefer to think about it that way?

 

What I'm basically asking is if it is possible to take a donar sperm and remove its X or Y chromosome, similar to how we are able to remove the chromosome from an ovum, and then insert the X chromosome of one of the women, and then use that sperm to artificially inseminate the other woman? If that were possible it would seem to me to be an effective way for lesbian couples to have children.

 

Can anyone tell me whether medical science has advanced enough, or whether it is even possible to perform a procedure like this? And if it is possible, are there any significant hurdles that would need to be overcome? And if itsn't possible to modify the sperm in the way I'm suggesting, is there any other way that this could conceivably be done?

Now days one can clone or have many genetics. Other than that, they even find that baby's genetics can get in mother. I gues think of it as you can get blood transfer and some cell get transfered beyond blood. They just found that in dogs, older sibling's genes can pass to younger. There are people with dual genetics (like conjoining twin without extra limbs).

 

So anyway, there are egg with 23 chromozome plus other rna etc. sperm have 23 chromozome. Sperm can be replaced with another egg. Or technically I think any of 46 can be replaced etc. Plus people can have multiple genetics( as in blood transfusion or function like organ transplants but at cellular level).