Many science fiction movies already show a future in which we can choose the hair color, height and even the sex of our children. Well, a group of researchers has just discovered that female pigs are capable of recognizing whether a sperm will engender a male or a female even before being fertilized .
It is not the first time that pigs have been studied by scientists. Before they had already analyzed their genome, they had been cloned and it had even been analyzed how the emotional state of the pigs influences the quality of their meat. Now a research group from the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom) and the University of Murcia have studied whether the interaction between gametes in the early stages influences this sex ratio in any way, even before the sperm has fertilized the oocyte. .
To find out if females can differentiate between male and female sperm, sows were inseminated with sperm that carried only the X or only Y sex chromosome. Subsequently, the gene expression of the porcine oviduct, that is, the genes that are activated in the cells of the oviduct. The result was surprising. The scientists found that there are 501 genes that produce different amounts of proteins depending on the type of sex chromosome carried by the sperm.
As Juan M. Vázquez, from the University of Murcia and co-author of the study, explains to the scientific news agency SINC, “the results of our experiment are the first evidence in mammals of how sperm, which carry an X or Y chromosome, could modulate a singular response of the oviduct [the fallopian tubes] through a differentiated gene expression ”.
The scientists involved in this work believe that this could be a way in which females unconsciously influence the sex of their offspring , although “this hypothesis is very vague,” says Vázquez.
On a practical level the applications are obvious. As the researcher himself points out, “modifying this proportion would make livestock production more efficient”. For her part, Alireza Fazeli, main author of the work, explains that “what our study shows is that mothers are capable of differentiating between the sperm that make the offspring male or female. This alone is incredible and is of great scientific and evolutionary importance. “
At the moment the experiment has been carried out only in pigs, but it would not be strange that, in future tests, other animals are analyzed to learn more about the reproductive mechanisms. The study has been published in the journal BMC Genomics .
