Joanna Russ’s short story “When it Changed” got me thinking: with the right science, would human parthenogenesis be possible? The answer is, maybe. This concept was explored in a paper by biologists Gabriel Jose de Carlia and Tiago Campos Pereira entitled “On human parthenogenesis,” which first appeared in the journal Medical Hypotheses (a publication which, to me, appears to propose ways to make biological science fiction phenomena into hard science–kinda cool). Carlia and Pereira address three barriers that must be overcome in order for human parthenogenesis to be realized: genomic imprinting, diploidy and heterozygosity, and zygotic behavior.

Source: “On human parthenogenesis”

Genomic imprinting refers to the “tagging” of paternal or maternal DNA that prevents a certain allele (i.e. a trait) from being expressed, meaning the allele from only one parent is expressed in the embryo. This process is crucial to human development. Carlos and Pereira suggest that deletion of several genes functionally comparable to those that allowed the creation of viable bi-maternal offspring in a mouse model could allow a human egg  to compensate for the absence of a paternally imprinted set of chromosomes, meaning it would be able to express proper alleles only using maternal DNA. Achieving diploidy and heterozygosity may be possible with the use of a bacterium, Carlia and Pereira hypothesize. The bacterium Wolbachia sp. can live symbiotically within a cell and is capable of inducing parthenogenesis in mites–parthenogenesis is advantageous to the bacterium, as it allows it to be transmitted to the host’s offspring (sounds wild, I know). Finally, the properly diploid, heterozygous gamete must be able to function as a zygote. In mice, the precise mutation of a proto-oncogene (a gene allowing for regular cell growth that, upon mutation, may induce cancer) can cause parthenogenetic activation, so it is proposed that the mutation of a similar gene in humans may do the same. In combination, these techniques would theoretically allow for viable human parthenogenetic offspring.

Putting these techniques into practice today would, of course, be considered unethical. However, the advent of “designer babies” and other uses of genetic engineering to ensure health and longevity suggest that genetic alteration for the purposes of parthenogenesis may not be an impossibility in the next hundred years, especially due to the so-called “male fertility crisis.” Who knows, maybe Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” was prophetic 🙂