I had at least heard about that gene therapy as well. It'll be interesting to see whether it can be applied to humans also (both scientifically and ethically) or whether it will prove more complicated.

Quote from: PixieBoy on July 27, 2011, 06:01:10 AM
I had a dream once. It was that you took a blood sample and gave it to a lab, and then they used it to determine your hormone levels and such things. With this knowledge, they calculated what changes would happen if you'd been born as a male instead of a female (deterministically, like if one could calculate die results by knowing exactly how it was thrown, air pressure, and all other factors). They then asked you if there were any effects you'd like them to remove (say that they discovered that if you'd been born male, you'd been blind, then you could ask them to keep your eyesight). Then, they programmed these orders into a set of nano-robots, injected the nanobots into you and put you to sleep for a week so the robots could do their work. Then, you'd wake up with exactly the body you'd have if you had been born a boy/girl/whatever. It would be pretty cool if this was real, right?

That.. sounds amazing! Kinda reminds me of Avatar for some reason

I wanted to add my two cents- that I think that it might be more possible to actually take stem cells and cells from a Transguy, biologically engineer them to "grow" genitalia, and then transplant them than it would be to clone another man's genitalia and then have them transplanted to someone else. As stated before, with any transplant, you need to worry about tissue/blood type, rejections, etc. But if it were to be biologically engineered from your own cells it would work- possibly even be able to produce sperm- but we are looking WAY into the future here. I don't think it will happen for a long time because Stem Cell Research is being focused elsewhere and to be honest I really don't mind, because I much rather give someone the ability to walk than have a penis and even functioning testicles.

Quote from: Noah G. on July 27, 2011, 11:03:37 AM
With my admittedly apparently weak internet search skills, this is the most current and most descriptive, non-technical article I could find (though perhaps someone else with better search skills can find more): Mice produce human sperm to raise hope for infertile men.

Advancements seem to be coming rapidly, but viability takes longer to establish, which is why it can be years at least before something is done in a lab and brought in to practice -- or even why some things can be done in a lab but never make it beyond that: there's no viability. That becomes even more difficult when advances are combined, and genitals would be difficult enough to produce without worrying about functionality. As said, only time will tell if it's even a possibility, and it would take a lot of people dedicated to this goal specifically to determine that. It's anyone's guess when or if this might happen, and it's really a testament to nature just how intensive and complicated it would be to produce those sort of results.

It might be science fiction, but science fiction has several times been brought to life in one form or another. Who knows whether this might be one of those cases at some point in the future.

The problem with the XX DNA would be the further complication due to the fact that it's not as straight-forward as XY. In fact, sexual characteristics in general aren't as straight-forward as XX or XY, but it becomes even more complicated, from my understanding, when one is trying to create an individual body part separate from the body and/or when the DNA is contrary to the sexual characteristic. To put it simply: there's more involved.

Thanks again for the article! Interesting stuff.

No problem! And yea, it definitely is. All of this is fascinating in its own right, let alone to see what they'll be able to do with it as they continue the research.