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posted by Fnord666 on Friday February 09 2018, @09:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-do-you-like-your-eggs?-unfertilized dept.

Scientists have coaxed primordial follicles from human ovarian tissue into creating apparently mature egg cells, although they have not been fertilized:

In an advance that could lead to new fertility treatments, researchers have coaxed immature human egg cells to fully develop in the lab for the first time. Still unclear is whether the resulting eggs, which reached maturity in just 22 days, compared with 5 months in the body, are normal and whether they can combine with sperm to make a healthy embryo.

The feat nonetheless is "extraordinarily important," says Kyle Orwig, a stem cell biologist at the Magee-Womens Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania who was not involved in the new work. "It has real potential for application," he adds. "We already have the patients."

Those patients include women who have gone through chemotherapy, which can damage eggs and cause infertility. Girls with cancer who haven't hit puberty don't yet produce mature eggs that can be frozen, so some choose to preserve a small piece of ovarian tissue, which can later be placed back in the body to start making eggs. But that's a risky choice in some cases, because the transplant could reintroduce the cancer with the cells. If the new process is perfected, these women could instead rely on the tissue they saved as girls to generate eggs for in vitro fertilization.

[...] In the new work, Telfer and her collaborators completed the whole developmental cycle. They took small samples from the ovaries of 10 women undergoing elective caesarian sections, and isolated 87 follicles, which they let develop in a soup of nutrients. Then came a new step: They carefully extracted the fragile, immature eggs and some surrounding cells from the follicles, and allowed them to further mature on a special membrane in the presence of more growth-supporting proteins. In the end, just nine of these eggs passed the final test for maturity [open, DOI: 10.1093/molehr/gay002] [DX]—they were able to divide and halve their chromosomes so they were ready to join with sperm during fertilization, the researchers reported online 30 January in Molecular Human Reproduction.

The next step would be to create the primordial follicles from stem cells or skin cells.

Also at BBC and The Guardian.

Related: Mice Created from Artificially Developed Embryos
Fertile Mouse Eggs Created Using Stem Cells


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 10 2018, @03:25AM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 10 2018, @03:25AM (#635850) Journal

    Want to make a bet? I'll bet that in 500 years, 99.9999% (or more) of all babies born, will be born to heterosexual male and female couples. All this silliness about guys having babies will be forgotten. The lasting legacy of today's experiments will be three parent babies. Infertile couples will be looking for third party help to conceive their own healthy babies.

    And, we'll still be talking about how amazing women are. Well - real men will be.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:17AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:17AM (#635863) Journal

    99% - sure. Maybe 99.9%. But I think you have too many 9s there. Maybe 3.8% identify as LGBT in the U.S. [gallup.com], for instance. Even if that is greatly exaggerated and it's closer to 1%, it could mean a large group of married homosexual couples that could defeat your 99.9999% prediction. Various factors could help this become possible. For example, artificial wombs could see wide use with heterosexuals, lowering their cost. If you're already doing IVF for fertility reasons, you might opt for an artificial womb once they become a proven technology. But women without fertility problems could opt to use them to avoid the problems/hassle associated with childbirth.

    To spice this up: We might see radical groups of homosexual MGTOWs living away from women and creating only male children using artificial wombs. On Mars?

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    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:44AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:44AM (#635872) Journal

      Nahhh - even IF your number weren't greatly exaggerated - soon, the novelty will wear off. Gays aren't all that interested in having babies. Right now, today, they are pushing for all this silly shit. When the novelty wears off, they're going to shrug their shoulders, and ask WTF they even bothered. 500 years from now? Pfft.

      What is far more likely, is that corporations are going to attempt to patent and copyright various things, like extra muscular workers, who require less oxygen, so that they can create workers for special circumstances. Corporate test tube babies raised in creches will owe their existence to the corporation, giving rise to a new form of slavery. But, that will have nothing to do with gay rights, or any other silliness - that will be all about money, and the subjection of working class people to corporate agendas.

      The great thing about those new slaves? They'll be hidden from public view, out in the asteroids, and in other hostile environments. Newsmen aren't going to go all the way out to one of our dwarf planets, fight their way down to the bottom of a mine, and document worker's conditions. That kind of thing is hazardous to a news man's health. Instead, he'll sit up in the VIP lounge, listening to the VP of Public Relations telling him how great the worker's lives are.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @01:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @01:30PM (#635997)

      Well, if current trends continue, and the premise that homosexuality is linked to population/number of siblings is correct, there may be far fewer homosexuals in the future. Population declining due to relatively high standard of living, which will likely be universal within a decade or few barring major wars, less children being had, less gays born.

  • (Score: 2) by unauthorized on Saturday February 10 2018, @02:48PM (1 child)

    by unauthorized (3776) on Saturday February 10 2018, @02:48PM (#636007)

    In 500 years, humanity will not be making any babies because we'd have finally managed to reset civilization or long transitioned into immortal machine-gods.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 10 2018, @03:17PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday February 10 2018, @03:17PM (#636017) Journal

      Runaway chose the baffling +500 year mark, not me. I'd prefer to keep it to 50-100 years and I think these fertility advances (such as two men having a genetic child using an artificial womb) will happen within the next 20-30 years.

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