Scientists say early experiments suggest it may one day be possible to make babies without using eggs.

 

科学家称，早期实验表明，将来某一天或许不需要卵子就能孕育出婴儿。

 

They have succeeded in creating healthy baby mice by tricking sperm¹ into believing they were fertilising normal eggs.

 

The findings in Nature Communications, could, in the distant future, mean women can be removed from the baby-making process, say the researchers.

 

For now, the work helps to explain some of the details of fertilisation.

 

End of mum and dad?

 

The University of Bath scientists started with an unfertilised egg in their experiments. They used chemicals to trick it into becoming a pseudo-embryo.

 

These "fake" embryos² share much in common with ordinary cells, such as skin cells, in the way they divide and control their DNA³.

 

The researchers reasoned that if injecting sperm into mouse pseudo-embryos could produce healthy babies, then it might one day be possible to achieve a similar result in humans using cells that are not from eggs.

 

In the mouse experiments, the odds⁴ of achieving a successful pregnancy⁵ was one in four.

 

Dr Tony Perry, one of the researchers, told the BBC News website: "This is the first time that anyone has been able to show that anything other than an egg can combine with a sperm in this way to give rise to offspring.

 

"It overturns nearly 200 years of thinking."

 

Those baby mice were healthy, had a normal life expectancy⁶ and had healthy pups of their own.

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