In a landmark achievement, a team of British researchers have managed to conceive baby mice without fertilising an egg cell with sperm – the natural (and highly popular) way of producing children.
Lead scientist Dr Tony Perry, a molecular embryologist from the University of Bath, said: “Our work challenges the dogma, held since early embryologists first observed mammalian eggs around 1827 and observed fertilisation 50 years later, that only an egg cell fertilised with a sperm cell can result in live mammalian birth.” The technique fuses sperm with ordinary cells derived from skin or other tissue to create viable embryos.