General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsScientists grow sperm in laboratory dish
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8988011/Scientists-grow-sperm-in-laboratory-dish.html
Scientists have made a major breakthrough that could soon see human sperm grown in the laboratory.
The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm.
-snip-
Scientists grew the sperm by surrounding the germ cells in a special compound called agar jelly to create an environment similar to that found in testicles.
-snip-
----------------------
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)so close to the sentence that mentioned testicles...
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)Not a slam on men but it'd be great if they could find a way to use two eggs to create a baby, that way lesbian couples can actually have their own kids together.
Response to justiceischeap (Reply #3)
Tesha This message was self-deleted by its author.
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)There's nothing special about agar jelly. It's the STANDARD compound for such things. And frankly, balls are a lot firmer than the jelly shit.
Still, it is a good thing. A lot of "donor sperm" fathers don't feel a connection to the child. I knew one who said he felt like his wife cheated on him, but we both knew she would never do something like that. He just couldn't wrap his head around the idea that some other guy's sperm was in his wife. On top of that, and he had a good point, there's no easy way to trace the medical history from the paternal side and that's often extremely important when issues come up.
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)It depends on where you purchase the sperm from but most have the donor fill out extensive medical histories so the people who use the donor sperm know the history.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,262 posts)...
Microscopic analysis revealed normal-looking sperm in 11 out of the 16 samples grown for 30 days in the culture. The researchers found only a few normal-looking sperm developed in each sample. From each sample of 10 million testicular cells, only an average of around 16 normal-looking sperm develo
...
This study has shown that, under the right environmental conditions, it is possible to grow normal-looking mouse sperm from immature testes cells in the lab. There are some limitations to note; in particular, the researchers point out that they were unable to isolate the live sperm produced using this method and therefore could not test whether they were able to fertilise eggs. In addition, although these sperm cells looked normal, the researchers could not assess their movement and did not carry out an in-depth assessment of whether the cells were genetically normal.
Although this development is of interest, a lot more research will be needed to determine whether this method provides a viable way of producing functioning, normal sperm in the laboratory. It will need to be perfected on mice first before being tested using human cells. Scientists do not yet know whether adult human testicular cells isolated and cultured in the laboratory would behave in the same way as testicular cells taken from immature mice.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/01January/Pages/scientists-grow-mature-sperm-in-lab.aspx
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)"Oh yeah... we grew that in that dish."