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'Completely new and totally unexpected finding': Iron deficiency in pregnancy can cause 'male' mice to develop female organs
Low iron levels can flip the genetic switch on a mouse's sex during development, causing XY embryos to grow female features. But it's not clear whether the effect applies to humans.
"This is a completely new and totally unexpected finding," study co-author Peter Koopman, a professor emeritus of developmental biology at the University of Queensland in Australia, told Live Science. To confirm this mechanism, the team also grew embryonic gonads — structures that develop into testes or ovaries in the womb — in lab dishes so they could directly observe the impact of iron depletion. Their similarities to humans make mice important models for studying development and disease, Gamble said, "but the differences urge caution in simply assuming processes are acting identically across both species."
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