• Question: If you take 2 sperm cells with x chromosomes and take out the nuclei from an egg cell, and replace the egg cell nuclei with a nuclei from the sperm cell and then fertilise that egg cell with a sperm cell with a x chromosome – can you make a female/girl? please think about it, i wanna know pleaseee im begging

    Asked by ayywin to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 18 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 18 Nov 2011:


      This is a very interesting question, and one that there has been debate about. Having developments like this would allow same-sex couples to have children that are biologically both of theirs.

      However, there are several issues you might come across in Biology class:

      1) Mother nature is very clever, and having female as XX and male as XY means that there always a 50% chance of a boy being conceived and 50% of a girl if Y is dominant:

      Cross | X | X |
      X | XX | XX |
      Y | XY | XY |

      But, if you have two XYs:

      Cross | X | Y |
      X | XX | XY |
      Y | XY | YY |

      There is a 25% of getting a girl, 50% chance of a boy and 25% of a “YY”.

      2) We don’t know if it is possible to have a YY combination and have a healthy baby.

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 18 Nov 2011:


      Apparently Japanese scientists have succeeded in producing female chicken sperm, but I don’t think they’ve managed to do anything with them. They’ve also combined two mouse eggs to produce a female baby mouse.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproduction#Same-sex_reproduction

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