Mice Created For 1st Time Without Fathers

Scientists have created two female mice without fertilising the eggs they grew from, the journal Nature says. The eggs had two sets of chromosomes from two female mice, rather than one from the mother and one from the father as in a fertilised embryo. The phenomenon, called parthenogenesis, never occurs naturally in mammals. Some researchers say the procedures may be applied to stem cell research, but the scientists who carried out the work say it would not yet work in humans.

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