By injecting DNA into an egg removed of DNA, would it be possible for two men to create a child with a physical appearance consisting of both parents?
In: Biology
Regurgitating college knowledge here, somebody update me if something new has been discovered:
No. At least, not currently and not easily. In the future as our techniques improve it might be possible.
Your DNA has a lot of “bookmarks” hidden in it, mostly proteins that attach to the code to block or boost certain genes. Human eggs and sperm add special “bookmarks” to their DNA to make sure the first few weeks of development go smoothly. If you try to combine DNA from two sperm, or two eggs, you can’t get a viable fetus without a bunch of extra engineering work. There’s been some work done on this with mice in recent years with mixed results, the consensus seems to be that a two-sperm child is impossible. So to get a baby with two genetic dads you’d basically need to take cells from one father’s body and somehow manipulate them into developing into eggs. Which is easier said than done. And even then there’s a lot of ethical questions since it’s hard to predict what sort of health issues could develop in a human from being conceived this way.
What you described is a molar pregnancy or Complete hydatidiform mole. This pregnancy will not come to term. There will be painless vaginal bleeding and vomiting. On ultrasound there will be the membranes that cover the sac (where the baby should be) but no fetus. There is about a 3% chance that it will evolve to a malignant cancer called choriocarcinoma.
Again, this can happen naturally, it’s rare but it can happen. Of course it would be two sperm cells from the same person penetrating into an empty egg.
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