Skin cells 'could be fused with sperm to create babies'

A landmark study has opened up the "fanciful" possibility that babies could be conceived from skin cells - without an egg cell. Using mice, a team of scientists produced healthy offspring while bypassing the normal process of fertilising an egg cell with sperm. Dr Tony Perry, who led the study, said that the finding "challenges the dogma that only an egg cell fertilised with a sperm cell can result in live mammalian birth".