First sperm¹ cells able to keep living grown from nothing (New Scientist, 23/3/11)

FOR the first time small rat-like animal sperm¹ able to keep living have been grown outside the testes². If the way can be done over again and again with mankind sperm¹, it could lead to new ways of giving attention to not-fertile men.

Takuya Sato at Yokohama City University in Japan and persons having like-position in the same organization got from seeds cells from the testes² of fresh after birth small rat-like animals that had not yet begun producing sperm¹. They placed the cells in agarose³ soft paste made wet for giving food to chemicals and hormones⁴ such as eggs undergoing growth in cow-like serum⁵ and testosterone⁶. The group had first engineered the small rat-like animal so that a protein⁷ only present in fully grown sperm¹ would fluoresce⁸ green. Safe enough, around one month later, the group spotted the glowing protein⁷ in nearly half of their examples.

Sato's group then forcefully joined together the sperm¹ with eggs from female small rat-like animal and created healthy living things in the early stages (before birth). When these living things in the early stages (before birth) were fixed into females they produced healthy offspring which were able to have sex, get married and give birth to their own young animals.

The group also made certain that the testes² living substance could become ice and made warm from cold without damage (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09850).

"Men and women have been trying to do this for years, but it takes a disgusting great amount of test and error," says Erwin Goldberg, an expert at biology at of the northwest University in Chicago, who was not involved in the observations. The key to the team's good outcome, Goldberg says, was power of waiting: they kept mixing chemicals in the place where tests are done until they found exactly the right direction to keep testes² cells living in a Petri plate and give what is desired, needed all their food and things needed.

Earlier studies using different methods achieved of the same sort, but less good outcomes. In 2006, Karim Nayernia at the University of Newcastle, United Kingdom, greatly changed stem cells from small rat-like animal in the early stages (before birth) into sperm¹ cells but most of the offspring died early. If researchers could change seeds cells from a not-fertile man into sperm¹ cells, they might be able to point without error exactly where something goes wrong in the sperm¹'s development and fix it, says Martin Dym, a copying expert at biology at Georgetown University in Washington DC. This way of doing could also help before-full-growth boys with cancer⁹, who are not yet producing full growth sperm¹, by growing sperm¹ cells that can become ice before radiation care.

1  sperm  SPERMATOZOON or SPERMATOZOID; SEMEN.    Go back

2  testes  The part of the body of a male animal producing SPERMATOZOA.    Go back

3  agarose  a POLYSACCHARIDE obtained from AGAR.    Go back

4  hormones Any of the stances produced by the ENDOCRINE GLANDS, which are taken by the blood to different parts of the body and have a special effect on their working.    Go back

5  serum The water-like part separating from a body-liquid when it goes solid, sp. from the blood; any thin, water-like liquid forming part of the body of an animal.    Go back

6  testosterone  A male HYDROXY STEROID KETONE (C19H28O2) SEX-HORMONE produced by the TESTES or made by man by chemical processes.    Go back

7  protein  Any of a great and important group of complex natural substances, forming a great part of all living material, made up of H, O, N, and C, and sometimes P, S or Fe, in the form of long CHAINS of AMINO ACIDS, into which they may be broken up by HYDROLYS is needed in food for body-building and got chiefly from meat, cheese, eggs, and fish.    Go back

8  fluoresce  Have the property of FLUORESCENCE, or be in the process of fluorescence.    Go back

9  cancer  MALIGNANT TUMOUR in which the diseased growth is of EPITHELIAL CELLS, for example, in the skin of the INTESTINE.    Go back