You cant create sperm from female cells, technically speaking.
So everyone that thinks that is ignorant about the state of things. Just think about it, this is a way to force a cell to undergo meiosis eventually creating a haploid gamete. The only way to create a sperm cell using female genetic information would be unethical at this point in time (due to the stigma genetic engineering [if you could call it that in its current state] has.)
I don't follow what you're saying.
You can create sperm from female cells. Keep in mind that these are embryonic stem cells; they are pluripotent, meaning they can differentiate into any of the three germ layers. The reproductive system is formed by mesoderm created from these pluripotent hESCs, and gametes are formed by meiosis from cells in the sexual organs.
Now, hESCs can differentiate into the same things regardless of whether they come from a male or female (although this is not to say they are indistinguishable. Male and female hESCs do have differences in surface expressed proteins). So theoretically,
any hESC (male or female) has the potential to differentiate into sperm, just like hESCs from both males and females can differentiate into red blood cells. An embryonic stem cell is an embryonic stem cell, irrespective of whether it is XY or XX.
In a state of nature (in vivo) females and XX cells cannot produce sperm because there are genes on the Y chromosome required for sperm production (
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition=ychromosomeinfertility). But I don't see why XX cells couldn't be chemically induced to produce sperm; after all, that is exactly what they did with XY cells in this experiment. Granted, it might be more difficult to do this with XX cells; in fact, this article says that when attempted with XX cells, they only produced "early stage sperm that did not progress any farther." (
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156730.php)
This Time Magazine article says the same thing, that it didn't progress past the spermatogonium stage (
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909164,00.html)
But there are some scientists who've allegedly created sperm and eggs from male cells (
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2624) and sperm cells from female cells (
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencea...6/Sperm-cells-created-from-female-embryo.html), so we have yet to see how this will all pan out.
Whether or not this can all be used to create viable embryos and people, on the other hand, is still up for grabs.
