Scientists just created healthy mice with same-sex parents And some went on to have healthy babies of their own.

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An adult mouse with two mothers, pictured with her own healthy offspring.
Leyun Wang
▼ Mice ain’t nothing but mammals, but, as a new paper published  todayin the journalStem Celldemonstrates, they don’t necessarily need to do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. In that paper, a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Science describe the complex process of using embryonic stem cells and gene editing to produce mice born from two parents of the same sex. The mice with two dads only lived about 48 hours, but the mice with two moms lived to adulthood—and were able to have babies of their own by mating with male mice. The research provides a new, sophisticated result that’s part of a significant body of research exploring the question of why we need two parents of different sexes at all.
Parthenogenesis, or reproduction  from an unfertilized egg, is not an uncommon way for non-mammals to reproduce. Some fish, insects, and even—sometimes— komodo  dragonsengage in it. But for mammals, the rule is that parents of two biological sexes are needed to conceive an offspring, and the egg needs to be fertilized by a sperm. Scientists have been trying to figure out why this is the case for a long time, and a lot of that research has involved some of our favorite test subjects: mice.
Having genetic information from two parents is an advantage, says University of Texas geneticist Richard Behringer, because “you’re mixing in variation and reconfiguration.” Basically, more diversity, says Behringer, who was not involved in the current research. The downside, if you want to see it that way, is that two organisms of opposing biological sex are always needed to make babies.
Nobody yet knows quite why we evolved this way, but research has made it clear that it has to do with needing genetic information from both mom and dad in order to grow. In 2004, a team of Japanese researchers was the first to producegenetically modified mice with two moms who could live to adulthood and even reproduce. They did this by changing specific genes involved in an important process called “imprinting.” (▪ ▪ ▪)

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