Your friend should want it implanted in his puenda area, that way he could make discreet use of it at any convenient moment, without having to whip anything out.
This is amazing, if I am reading this correctly - vulva tissue was used to form a tube which was implanted into the correct position (no hands, sorry) and it then grew its own nerves and blood supply.
My question over in GQ seemed to indicate that any given somatic stem cell (let alone a non-stem cell) could not be expected to generate that range of tissue types, let alone do so all by itself after implantation.
To create a body part like that you need to use the cells of the recipient, isn’t it so? So if I - I mean my friend - is a male, could his cells to be guided to generate something like this?
Males have all the genes necessary to produce female genitalia, even ovaries. Which kind of genitalia develop in an embryo is determined by which hormones and other factors are present during development.
Yes and no. A genetically male embryo that develops in the absence of testosterone (or one that is insensitive to testosterone, as in androgen insensitivity syndrome) will develop a typically female appearance, including female-looking external genitalia. However, the internal genitalia will not be typical - the uterus will usually be absent, the vaginal cavity may be unusually short or absent, and the gonads will be testes, not ovaries.
Would it be even remotely possible in nature for a ‘XX’ to come out as a fully functional male, or a ‘XY’ to develop as a fully functional female?
It is my understanding that the chromosome structure was absolute, and that various conditions in the womb (an occupied uterus) could screw up the functionality, but the hardware was an unalterable.
As in the genitalia comes out confused , and/or the individual is sterile. Correct?
Then there is the issue of XXY and such. How’d THAT happen?
If you mean “functional for sexual intercourse” yes, nature can produce XX males and XY females. So far as we know such people are sterile, as their testes/ovaries never properly develop and in the case of XY females the uterus never develops. But since it is their sterility/lack of menstruation that typically brings them to the attention of medical people it is theoretically possible (even if, given our understanding, unlikely) that such a person could be fertile but never come to the attention of anyone checking chromosomes. Maybe. It’s possible. No known case on record.
There are various disorders that can result in “confused” genitalia, but there are quite a few cases on record of XY women and a few XX men whose external genitalia, at least, are not the least bit “confused” and fully functional for intercourse.
Indeed, before we could look at human chromosomes such people were simply sterile for no known reason. At a certain point it was noticed that some women simply lacked a uterus, but there was nothing there to indicate this person “should” have been male. Even less sign of something amiss with the men, they just didn’t have viable sperm, that’s all.
Well, obviously, either the egg or the sperm had two chromosomes instead of one. Reproduction is not perfect either on a cellular or macro level.
True, but my point was that a male has all the genes necessary to construct any part of the human body. While in nature an XY individual won’t develop an ovary, at least in theory his genes could be manipulated to produce one (although we’re far from being able to do that now).