Scientists discovered that removing specific molecules from developing mice can completely reverse their sex from male to female.
Scientists discovered that removing specific molecules from developing mice can completely reverse their sex from male to female.
Also, these changes wouldn’t necessarily change an adult body to a different sex even if you did reprogram every cell. It’s merely the step that determines the way the rest of development unfolds. But once that development happens, much of it is irreversible (at least within the human genome and its available tools).
It might someday be possible to build a whole new package of genetic machinery to change a person’s sex completely but this is far beyond current technology since nothing like this exists in the human body or any animal remotely similar to humans. It would have to be created from scratch, while most genetic engineering today is more or less cutting and pasting from other organisms or breaking shit to see what happens (as in this research).
How similar to humans would you say frogs are?
A little but not as much was we would want. I was thinking about mentioning that but it’s in tadpoles as well so it’s not even clear a similar process could work for adults. Still, it’s a place to start the research.