Scientists finally crack code to create test-tube puppies

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This article was published 15/12/2015 (3881 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last summer, seven 250-gram mutts from six parents tumbled out of the womb of a single mother.

This isn’t a math problem — it’s biology. And it has been solved for the first time by in vitro fertilization for dogs.

The technique of fertilizing an egg in a test tube and then implanting the embryo in a woman’s womb has been used to help human couples have children since the late 1970s, but scientists have struggled to do the same for canines. The birds and the bees, it would seem, work a little differently in dogs.

But a team of researchers at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, working in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution, managed to tweak the IVF procedure enough to produce the seven healthy IVF puppies — the first in the world, they say.

The dogs, born July 10, are a mix of beagle, Labrador and cocker spaniel, according to The Associated Press.

“We each took a puppy and rubbed it with a little towel and when it started to squiggle and cry, we knew we had success,” Alexander Travis, who runs the lab at Cornell, told the AP. “Their eyes were closed. They were just adorable, cute, with smooshed-in faces. We checked them to make sure they looked normal and were all breathing.”

The birth of the puppies was a reward for years of research into making IVF work for dogs.

The problem, the scientists say, is that the canine reproductive cycle differs from that of humans and other mammals. When the female dogs’ eggs were extracted at the same stage of their menstrual cycle as is done for humans, the eggs weren’t yet ready to be fertilized.

According to a Cornell veterinary college press release, the team “found that if they left the egg in the oviduct one extra day, the eggs reached the stage where fertilization was most likely to occur.”

Altering the cell culture where the egg was fertilized also helped, they wrote.

The researchers tout the achievement as having significant implications for wildlife conservation.

“We can freeze and bank sperm to conserve the genetics of endangered species,” said co-author Alex Travis, a Cornell professor of reproductive biology.

The method can also be employed to preserve rare breeds both of show and working dogs.

But it’s also likely to have consequences for human health. Dogs and humans share some 350 inherited diseases, including cancer and diabetes. Using IVF will allow researchers to more closely examine how the traits that lead to those illnesses are passed down through dog — and ultimately, human — DNA.

Plus, who doesn’t like a scientific study that ends with seven adorable puppies?

— Washington Post