5
$\begingroup$

Do you think it will become possible to create opposite sex clones in the future? A male clone from a woman or a female clone from a man?

I think it will become possible. To create a female clone from a man you could take his cells and turn off the Androgen receptor genes. So the person will develop as female and will have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. A sterile woman with XY chromossomes.

To create a male clone from a woman it would be needed to take her cells and add/create the Sry system genes and put them into the XX chromossome. So there will be a male clone from a woman.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
5
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ If it's opposite sex it's no longer a clone. That apart, one question per post, please. I count at least 3. $\endgroup$
    – L.Dutch ♦
    Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 4:40
  • $\begingroup$ I updated my question. Back to the topic, if a person is made using another person`s cells and genome how would the new person not be a clone whatever they are the same sex or not? $\endgroup$
    – Sabrine Crystal Santos
    Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 5:12
  • $\begingroup$ "and add/create the sry system genes" - so a male won't be the exact genetic clone of a female. $\endgroup$
    – Alexander
    Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 5:21
  • $\begingroup$ Could he be a son of the female? $\endgroup$
    – Sabrine Crystal Santos
    Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 5:34
  • $\begingroup$ Son is fine, but son is not a clone. $\endgroup$
    – Alexander
    Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 18:29

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
11
$\begingroup$

To create a female clone from a man... turn off the Androgen receptor genes. So the person will develop as female and will have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

This method would produce an individual that is genotypically male but phenotypically female, making them intersex. The resulting offspring would be a clone, but wouldn't be "genetically" female. Identity and psychology are an entirely different question, and many intersex people do identify with the phenotypes they express, but androgen suppression does not equate to a full genetic sex change.

A more "accurate" alternative would be to duplicate the male X chromosome 23 - turning an XY into an XX. Though the resulting individual wouldn't be a perfect clone because the proportions of source DNA would be skewed, all the source material would come from the original male. Of course, you can't really do that without genetic consequences. For more information, research creating offspring from same-sex parents.

To create a male clone from a woman... add/create the Sry system genes and put them into the XX chromossome

Add or create the Sry system genes from where? At what point does the new individual stop being a clone and become, more ambiguously, "genetically edited offspring" since foreign DNA is introduced? Why not just take an entire Y-chromosome from a related individual while you're at it?

The bottom line is that no individual of the opposite sex can be genetically identical to its "parent" because sex is defined by different genes.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ Why wouldn`t a CAIS woman be a real woman since sh would have the genitals and physiology of a woman(except for pregnancy and womb and ovaries)? Even medicine accept CAIS women as real women. It could be another talk if I was talking about male to female transexuals. $\endgroup$
    – Sabrine Crystal Santos
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 14:27
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @SabrineCrystalSantos "Real" depends on how you assess sex/gender. Genetically, someone with CAIS would be assigned the biological sex of male (despite anomalous androgen receptor genes). Anatomically, someone with XY chromosomes and CAIS would be mostly biologically female except for reproductive organs, possibly leading to the label "intersex" to describe their biology. Psychologically / socially, their gender identity (as opposed to "biological sex") wouldn't depend on physiology at all and could be male, female, or neither. "Real woman" is a contextually variable term. (1/2) $\endgroup$
    – Zxyrra
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 15:24
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @SabrineCrystalSantos (2/2) Medicine accepts CAIS people as "biological women" for anatomical / treatment reasons. Conversely, a geneticist might consider a CAIS woman "genetically male" when doing genetic testing yet address them with female pronouns based on gender identity. This is similar to how non-intersex trans people are identified. A trans man would be considered male by his doctor when assessing hormones (because he IS a man at present, socially and physically), while simultaneously his XX chromosomes and lack of a prostate would influence breast vs prostate cancer screenings. $\endgroup$
    – Zxyrra
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 15:29
1
$\begingroup$

Female Clone from a Man

This is possible without doubling up on the X gene, seeing as how in human females, despite having XX genes, only one X gene is active in any given cell at a time. (This is responsible for the color phenomenon of calico cats.) It will take genetic manipulation though, as you'll have to turn the Y gene off. As it, completely unresponsive no matter what, and do this without upsetting the existing balance of the cell and inducing Turner syndrome. Honestly, the easier method is just swapping the Y for the same X. But this method will have the same DNA. Same library of DNA, anyway, because we've turned the Y into a Barr body.

Male Clone from a Woman

Impossible in humans, I'm afraid. Even if you added the SRY gene on an X-chromosome, and you considered that to be an exception to the cloning rules, we run into a problem - Barr bodies. One of those X genes is going to be inactivated, so if it's the one with the SRY gene. And, like calico cats, it will be deactivated in some places, but exclusively activated in others places. This will no doubt lead to developmental problems. And placing SRY genes on both of the X genes won't help either, because then those genes will be treated as Y genes by the body, and subsequently the body will only register Y genes. This is also bad.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
0
$\begingroup$

If your'e willing to loosen your definition of "clone" just a little bit, the same technique can be used in either direction.

As noted in another answer, duplicating the X chromosome from a male, while deleting the Y, has potentially serious problems, in that the result will resemble inbreeding in terms of genetic duplication for any genes carried on the X. Further, there isn't a practical way to create a Y from an X to go the other way.

So just adopt part of Mother Nature's method -- bring in donor chromosomes from an unrelated male (in the case of the male clone from female original) or female (vice versa). All other genes will be identical to the "parent's" genome, and by controlling which X is active (as noted in another answer, only single X is active in a female), the female clone from a male "parent" can be as identical as possible, while the male clone from the female "parent" will also be as identical as a male can be.

There is another option (not necessarily a good one) for cloning a female from a male "parent" -- just delete the Y and leave things alone. This will give a female child with Turner's Syndrome, most of the effects of which can be countered with hormone supplements at appropriate development stages. Probably unethical, but possible...

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ Why should duplicating the X chromosome and deleting the Y cause homozygosity issues? The genes on the X are already haplosufficient in males and mostly so in females. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Nichols
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:00
  • $\begingroup$ @MikeNichols Because if you happen to duplicate a defective gene, you get problems. If your chromosomes come from unrelated parents, this gives normal incidence of things like hemophilia, color-blindness, and baldness, but if they're identical, there's no second copy to cover -- everything on that chromosome is homozygous. $\endgroup$
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:51
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, if you duplicate the X then everything on the pair of X's will be homozygous. But wasn't it effectively homozygous before when you only had one copy of the X in the male? If a male has a defective gene on the X then they will already have the resulting disease because the male already doesn't have a second chromosome to complement defective genes on the X. Duplicating the X and making the individual female wouldn't make whatever X-linked diseases the male has any worse in the resulting female. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Nichols
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 18:12
  • $\begingroup$ What you describe, with the Y failing to mask defects on X, is where we get red-green dichromatism and hereditary hemophilia, which are passed in the female line, but only affect males. And no, an "foreign" Y wouldn't help with that. But duplicating the X if cloning a color-blind male would give you a color-blind female clone, all of whose sons would be color-blind. And there are worse sex-linked defects which are fortunately rarer than that one. $\endgroup$
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 19:00

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .