We Don’t Need the Men?

Malvina Reynolds, the well known folk singer and song writer wrote a song We Don’t Need the Men (read the lyrics here, they are fantastic) has just got a new possible verse- we only need the men to move the piano, take us to the symphony, and now we don’t even need them for their sperm BECAUSE sperm have just been cloned in a British lab!?!

This experiment was a proof of concept that stem cells can generate any cell in the body — not only the dozens of tissues that make up the human body but also those egg and sperm cells that may give rise to altogether new bodies. “Other cell types don’t generate the next generation,” says Nayernia, a professor of stem-cell biology at Newcastle University. “This makes a very big difference between our study and the study of other cell types from embryonic stem cells.” And these sperm cells are wanting in other features, as well. The  in vitro–derived sperm, or IVD sperm, are not exactly like naturally occurring sperm, though they do bear four important similarities to the cells created in the testes.

 “We think, for normal structure development, sperm needs the testes environment,” says Nayernia. It takes 15 to 16 years in the testes before the primordial germ cells that morph into spermatogonia, or a primitive precursor of the germ cells, are able to mature into sperm cells that can successfully fertilize an egg. 

It is against British law to  transplant these cells into people — we still need men to provide sperm for baby making. Seriously, there are important things that we can learn from this discovery, you’ll have to read it from the source.  But Reynold’s song is running in my head, anyway.

 

Via: Bud Cadell  www.whatconsumesme.com wonderful site, go see