Sharks could give into virgin birth

[LaFille]

...As shown two accidental discoveries when keeping females in captivity.

The first time: Hammerhead Shark Gave "Virgin Birth" in Omaha Zoo.
The most recent case: Shark "Virgin Birth" Confirmed.

The finding marks the first confirmed case of a female shark fertilizing her own eggs and giving birth without sperm from a male, a process known as parthenogenesis.

"We were very surprised to find parthenogenesis in a shark," said Mahmood Shivji, director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Florida's Nova Southeastern University.

"It has been found in other vertebrates, birds, snakes, reptiles, even some bony fishes, but it has never been described in sharks and rays or in mammals," he added.

[...]

[Hildor]

After Jesus and Raptor Jesus we now have a shark jesus?

Interesting find btw, I thought such things only happend to the less common and more weird type of animals.

[rhiian]

ooer.
so it's not asexual reproduction then because 1) already defined as a male/female sex 2) the DNA was mixed differently?

Offspring produced by parthenogenesis are not exact clones of their mothers, however, because the genetic material is mixed differently.

My n00by GCSE biology teacher would love to hear about this lol.

[LaFille]

It would be asexual reproduction because all comes from the female herself, but it's not clonage because the offspring's DNA is not a copy of the mother's. Basically, it can be analogue to hermaphrodite reproduction except that in this case the mother doesn't have both sexes and the egg is "fertilized" from the ground up.

[The Sonar Chicken]

That's interesting, though I doubt humans wouldn't be capable of this, unless via an artificial method.

[rhiian]

maybe, someone could write a book. Like one of those "Think yourself thin" but "Think yourself pregant" involving hardcore thinking

[LaFille]

We wouldn't really have any advantage out of it over sexual reproduction in the current state of things either. For threatened species though, it could be something that would help in the case of a temporary lack of males.

However, that is interesting on the topic of parthenogenesis on mammals/humans:

There are no known cases of naturally-occurring mammalian parthenogenesis in the wild. However, in 1936, Gregory Goodwin Pincus reported successfully inducing parthenogenesis in a rabbit.

In April 2004, scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture used parthenogenesis successfully to create a fatherless mouse.

It is highly doubtful that artificial human parthenogenesis would be used to reproduce humans, due to technical (see imprinting below) concerns. Use of an electrical or chemical stimulus can produce the beginning of the process of parthenogenesis in the asexual development of viable offspring.

Induced parthenogenesis in mice and monkeys often results in abnormal development. This is because mammals have imprinted genetic regions, where either the maternal or the paternal chromosome is inactivated in the offspring in order for development to proceed normally. A mammal created by parthenogenesis would thus have double doses of maternally imprinted genes and lack paternally imprinted genes, leading to developmental abnormalities if any were present in the genes of the mother. As a consequence, research on human parthenogenesis is focused on the production of embryonic stem cells for use in medical treatment, not as a reproductive strategy.

On June 26, 2007 International Stem Cell Corporation (ISC), a California based stem cell research company, announced that their lead scientist, Dr. Elena Revazova, and her research team were the first to intentionally create human stem cells from unfertilized human eggs using parthenogenesis. The process may offer a way for creating stem cells that are genetically matched to a particular woman for the treatment of degenerative diseases that might affect her.

On August 2, 2007, after much independent investigation, it was revealed that discredited South Korean scientist, Hwang Woo-Suk, unknowingly produced the first human embryos resulting from parthenogenesis. Initially, Hwang claimed he and his team had extracted stem cells from cloned human embryos, a result which was later found to be fabricated. Further examination of the chromosomes of these cells show indicators of parthenogenesis in those extracted stem cells, similarly to those found in the mice created by Tokyo scientists in 2004. Although Hwang deceived the world about being the first to create artificially cloned human embryos, he did contribute a major breakthrough to stem cell research by creating human embryos using parthenogenesis.

On December 18, 2007 Dr. Revazova and ISC published an on-line article in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells illustrating a breakthrough in the use of parthenogenesis to produce human stem cells that are homozygous in the "HLA" region of the DNA. These stem cells are called HLA homozygous parthenogenetic human stem cells (hpSC-Hhom) and have unique characteristics that will allow derivatives of these cells to be implanted into millions of people without immune rejection. With proper selection of oocyte donors according to HLA haplotype, it is possible to generate a bank of cell lines, whose tissue derivatives collectively, could be MHC-matched with a significant number of individuals within the human population.

Although the truth about the results of Hwang's work were just discovered, those embryos were created by him and his team before February 2004, making Hwang the first, although unknowingly, to perform the process of parthenogenesis to create a human embryo and ultimately a human parthenogenetic stem cell line successfully. In 2006, a group of Italian researchers announced they had achieved the same feat, but have yet to publish their results. Therefore, ISC is the first organization to achieve artificial parthenogenesis that intentionally led to the creation of human parthenogenetic stem cell lines from unfertilized eggs.

***

maybe, someone could write a book. Like one of those "Think yourself thin" but "Think yourself pregant" involving hardcore thinking

That would most likely lead to more cases of this phenomenon: pseudopregnancy. ;D

That is actually a pretty impressive thing in itself. I have only read about human women experiencing the full thing, but a friend's dog did a false pregnancy just last year; it was a vet case and scared the owners enough to sterilize the doggie.

[Hildor]

Such things really make you afraid of your own mind It is absolutely impossible what the mind can do. Very bad that it's not always in a good way though.