Soy Isoflavone makes a male a female!?

Making a male Sturgeon a female Sturgeon with soy Isoflavone, the first case in Japan.

Kinki University announced that their research team achieved their experiment, which is that they use soy Isofavone to make male Sturgeons become female Sturgeons. This is the first achievement in Japan to make all male Sturgeons female Sturgeons.

This experiment will help to improve the productivity to produce caviars.

1. The background of this experiment

Sturgeon is the common name for the twenty-seven species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseidae, and several species of sturgeon are harvested for their roe, which is processed into the luxury food “Caviar”. This research group use “Acipenser Ruthenus”. This Sturgeon grows the earliest in their species. The weight of female sturgeons is 1kg when they are three years old, and they have eggs called Caviar. Their birth rate about gender is 1:1, so the productivity of farm-raised is one of their problems. Kinki University has worked on birthing only female sturgeons from eggs since May 2021.

2. About their Research

Two-month-old hatched sturgeon fry was divided into four groups of twenty-five fish each and bred for 180 days with a compound feed containing genistein, a type of soy isoflavone. After that, they were bred on a general compound feed containing no genistein for about 70 days, and about 8 fish per group were dissected to examine the gonads, and at the same time, the genetic sex of each individual was identified by a body surface mucus test.
日本初！大豆イソフラボンによるチョウザメの全メス化に成功　安全な方法で効率的なキャビア生産をめざす | NEWSCAST

As a result of their research, eight of eight sturgeons that contain 1000µg/g genistein have an ovary.

3.Public opinion in Japan

Some people accept and are surprised at their research, which is a great achievement considering the aspect of productivities and further use for humans. But we can see some negative opinions at the same time. Some comments seem to imply to predict the vaccine will be forced naturally. Technology will save us but sometimes it will cause a big risk for us. We also need to organize and make the standard how to use technology.