Scientists have tricked male fish cells that were destined to become sperm into switching sex and becoming eggs instead.
The technique could one day be used to quickly produce animals with desired traits, speed up breeding programs and help repopulate dwindling populations of endangered species or creating sushi on demand, the researchers said.
Scientists have long known that some fish are able to switch their sex, either spontaneously or when exposed to steroids. This led them to suspect that a subset of the population of cells in male fish that normally become sperm, called spermatogonia, might be stem cells that have the potential to become either sperm or eggs.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers isolated spermatogonia from the testes of adult rainbow trout and transplanted them into newly hatched trout of both sexes. In male hatchlings, the transplanted cells developed into sperm, while in females they developed into eggs.
The scientists are currently looking into whether eggs could be transformed into sperm. Other researchers have successfully produced sperm from mice stem cells.
source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060207/sc_space/spermcellsturnedintoeggs Stephen
Topic: Fish cells turned from Sperm to Eggs... well kinda. (Read 1100 times)