Scientists Created Male and Female Cells from a Single Person

Most people have two sex chromosomes, either two X's or an X and a Y, which gives rise to female or male biological attributes on a spectrum. Studies show that the chromosomes have a bigger effect on processes like immune system function and disease susceptibility. It's difficult to scrutinize the role of X and Y chromosomes. It's hard to disentangle the effects of genes and hormones with current tools.

Scientists have come up with a way to make cells from a single person for the first time. There are questions about how sex chromosomes affect disease and the role they play in early development.

The set of cell lines was not involved in the study. It is a big step to have cell lines from the same person with the same sex chromosomes.

The project was started by Benjamin Reubinoff and his team at the Hadassah Medical Center. According to Reubinoff, there are two major ones at the moment: the inability to separate chromosomal and hormonal effects and the inability to determine the effects of X and Y chromosomes. There was a lack of a good model to study differences between males and females. There have been animal models but not a human one.

The model was created by Reubinoff, his former M.D. and PhD student Ithai Waldhorn and their colleagues. The cells came from the repository of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, where people donate samples for use in a wide range of medical research.

The cells were genetically identical, apart from their sex chromosomes. The researchers replicated findings from previous studies with other models. Previously reported differences in genes were confirmed by them. Evidence of sex differences in early neural development was found after they coaxed their stem cells to develop into immature versions of neuron. The model showed differences between the sexes that were reported from other systems. The findings were published in a journal.

A professor of cancer and cell biology at Temple University says that the study supports the idea that sex differences start early in development and that they depend on the sex chromosomes.

In the past, researchers have looked at the effects of sex chromosomes in animals using a mouse model. There are instructions for developing testes in this region of the Y chromosome. The effects of sex hormones and sex chromosomes can be isolated in animals with the same sex organs. The mouse model changed the way sex difference research is done. This research can be moved into humans, she says.

Jessica Abbott, a senior lecturer in evolutionary genetics at Lund University in Sweden, believes that this research will lead to new research. It will be important to derive XX and XY stem cells from another person to see how much variation there is between people, which will help determine how generalizable findings from these cells are to the wider population.

The cells can't model the entire human body. Scientists may be able to address a broader array of research questions in the future with the development of new techniques such as body-on-a-chip systems that model the connections between cells from different organs. Reubinoff is excited about the possibilities of using stem cells alone. He says that he can use the tool to generate any cell type and develop models for diseases. We developed a model that opens a lot of doors.