Trout lend sperm to sterile salmon

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Japanese scientists helped infertile salmon sire baby trout by lending them trout sperm, a technique that could save endangered species, according to research published in the United States Thursday.

The scientists injected sperm cells from adult rainbow trout into the salmon, enabling the sterile fish then to produce trout sperm by itself, according to the study in the journal Science.

These new sperm were then removed and inserted artificially into female salmon, causing them to lay pure trout eggs and making the male salmon fathers of baby trout.

The team "produced a generation of donor-derived fish, suggesting that it may be possible to generate fish of endangered or extinct species as long as the reproductive material can be...