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posted by chromas on Friday May 04 2018, @02:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-getting-started dept.

Scientists have created blastocyst-like structures (embryo precursors) from mouse stem cells. They were capable of growth, but are not considered to be capable of producing viable embryos:

Dutch scientists have built "synthetic" embryos in their laboratory using mouse cells other than sperm and eggs.

The stem cell breakthrough, described in [the] Nature journal [DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0051-0] [DX], is not for cloning people or animals, but about understanding why many pregnancies fail at an early stage - implantation. The embryos, made in a dish, attached to the womb lining of live female mice and grew for a few days.

Studying the process could help human fertility, experts say.

At least one expert doesn't think that more complicated human embryos would (or could) be created with the technique:

Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, an expert at the UK's Francis Crick Institute, said the prospects for obtaining human embryo-like structures in this way was currently "very remote". "This is a pity for basic research because it would be very useful to have a limitless supply of human blastocyst-like stage embryos to understand the relevant cell-cell interactions required to make normal embryos and to study mechanisms of implantation. However, it may come as a relief to others that such a method of producing many genetically identical human embryo-like structures that might be capable of implantation is not feasible - even if it would be illegal to implant them into women, as is clearly the situation in the UK."

That may be due to differences in stem cell lines:

Harry Leith, Group Head at MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, acknowledged the breakthrough, but cautioned that it was unlikely to be duplicated with human stem cells anytime soon. The experiments "appears to be the most successful attempt so far reported to 'build' an early embryo exclusively from cultured stem cell lines," he said in a comment provided by the Media Science Centre. "However, we have yet to produce human stem cell lines with properties similar to the mouse cells used in this study."

Related: Mice Created from Artificially Developed Embryos
Fertile Mouse Eggs Created Using Stem Cells
Human Egg Cells Developed From Ovarian Tissue Samples


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @07:08AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @07:08AM (#675532)

    it could be worse. They could be shining lasers into mice brains as they sleep just to discover that shining lasers into a brain affects sleep patterns.