Male and Female Cells from the Same Person?

Once again, an insane medical leap has been made in Israel and for the first-time human male and female cells have been created from the same person. This breakthrough was made at the Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.

You may be asking yourself, what is the difference between male and female cells? Well, let’s think about this logically. Male and female bodies are different, right? Females have uteruses and males have testes. There are also certain diseases that occur at higher rates in males versus females, such as breast cancer (higher in women, but is possible for men to have as well). There are also differences in how effective or toxic certain medicines and therapies are for both males and females. How does this happen? What is one of the determining factors for a male or female body? The presence of an X or Y chromosome! Males are XY and females are XX.

In humans, every cell nucleus contains 23 pairs of chromosomes (they're supposed to, obviously there can be anomalies) for a total of 46 chromosomes. The first 22 pairs are called autosomes and they contain the same genes in the same order. The last pair of chromosomes are called allsomes (also known as the sex chromosome), and they contain either two X chromosomes or an X and Y chromosome.

What is the significance of this finding? Well, it is a step forward in gender medicine that explores the effects of sex on health, disease course, and the effectiveness of treatments. Scientifically, it would be easiest to determine these things with two subjects of identical DNA except their sex chromosomes. Unfortunately, that isn't exactly a naturally occurring thing; yes, identical twins exist, but there hasn't been a case of identical twins of opposite gender. Not yet anyway. Even if they were able to find a sample of test subjects, the number of persons needed to get statistically significant results would be in the tens of thousands at least.

So, let's skip to the fun part - how were these cells generated? Stem cells. The team of scientists working on this project generated male and female cells from stem cells. Stem cells are unique in that they are not differentiated, so they are able to become essentially whatever the body needs. Anyway, the cells generated were of course male and female stem cells. What is the significance? Using these cells for research would help demonstrate gender differences without the results being impacted by natural genetic variability due to other factors such as hormones. This means that the "true" value of the previously mentioned items that are often clouded in research (disease patterns and the effects of medications). Hopefully, soon these cells can be produced on a larger scale that would aid researchers in looking at some of the previously mentioned factors. Potentially, this science could also be applied to things like reproductive studies as well. For now, it will not be going that far, contrary to the summary we posted for this article. What a time to be alive!

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