Kaguya (mouse)

Kaguya was the first bimaternal mouse created in laboratory using two eggs from female parents by Tomohiro Kono and colleagues at Tokyo University of Agriculture.

The first bimaternal mouse was named after a Japanese folk tale, in which the Moon-born princess Kaguya (Kaguya-hime) is found as a baby inside a bamboo stalk.

Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction that refers to development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell by the female parent.

[1][2] Rapid advances in molecular biology and genomics have made it possible for successful artificial development of a mouse embryo solely from unfertilized eggs.

[1] These two genes are key regulators of mammalian embryonic development and have different levels of activity in the sperm and egg cell due to genomic imprinting.

In a follow up paper, Kono lab was able to increase the number of bimaternal mice generated by modifying the genetic manipulations performed on the newborn eggs used in the experiment.

In mice , natural mating involves fertilization of an egg by a sperm . Kaguya was created in laboratory from two egg cells.