(Photo from the website bioRxiv.org)
(ECNS) -- A report in international journal website bioRxiv.org about Chinese scientists successfully impregnating a male rat that gave birth made an online splash Sunday. However, this study is far from "male pregnancy."
The experiment surgically conjoined a castrated male and female rat by sewing their skin together and sharing blood to produce a heterosexual parabiotic pair. After eight weeks, uterus transplantation was performed on the male parabiont, and blastocyst-stage embryos transplanted to the grafted uterus of the latter and the native uterus of the female.
It said the study sought to investigate the potential for rat embryonic development in the grafted uteruses of male parabionts, provided that transferred embryos from pregnant female parabionts developed normally.
The international journal website shows that this paper was pre-published and not has not been recognized by the academic community.
