# Can two women make a baby? (update)

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-two-women-make-a-baby-update/241327
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
**Created:** [April 22, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-two-women-make-a-baby-update/241327 "2004-04-22T01:41:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-two-women-make-a-baby-update/241327/1 "2004-04-22T01:41:24Z")

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Cecil’s article from long ago: [Can two women make a baby?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_059.html)

> [@](#):
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> [Pierre]Soupart used a special process involving a virus to fuse two unfertilized mouse eggs, resulting in a single cell that subsequently began dividing as if it were an ordinary fertilized egg. Soupart stopped his experiment once the embryo (if that’s what it was) got to the 64-cell stage, but it’s possible the thing could have been implanted in a mommy mouse’s womb, so that today we’d have some little rodent waltzing around with two mothers and no father. The mind reels.

It’s from after 1980, but beyond that I don’t know how old it is.

And from CNN, science marches on: [Scientists conceive mouse with two moms.](http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/04/21/fatherless.mouse.ap/index.html)

> [@](#):
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> [the researchers] say they produced two mice, one of which grew to maturity and gave birth. Kono said this mouse, named “Kaguya” after a Japanese fairy tale character, appears to be perfectly healthy.

And some big new questions:

> [@](#):
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> For the study described in Nature, the researchers got around the need for male-derived DNA by turning to mutant mice. The female mice were missing a chunk of DNA, and as a result, two of their genes would behave in an embryo as if they’d come from a male.  
> …  
> Marisa Bartolomei, who studies imprinting at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, said she was “stunned” that manipulating just the two genes removed the roadblock to producing live mice.
> 
> In fact, analysis showed that an array of other imprinted genes had somehow taken on their normal levels of activity, as if there’d been a standard fertilization. The researchers said they don’t know how that happened.