https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/scientists-create-synthetic-embryo-from-stem-cells
Genetic engineering experts at the University of Cambridge have produced a "synthetic" mouse embryo without using egg or sperm cells.
The embryos produced using stem cells were able to start developing a heart, brain, and other organs for up to a week, according to a press release published by the university on Thursday.
"It's an absolutely fantastically complex stage of development, and it has extremely relevant meaning for the rest of our life," said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a Cambridge professor of mammalian development and stem cell biology, at a press conference announcing the findings.
[...] The researchers believe their findings will one day help explain why many human pregnancies fail early in development and may even inform future efforts to create lab-grown organs for transplantation.
To a certain extent, researchers have learned how to develop already created embryos in the lab, as well as how to create artificial but simplistic models of embryos or individual organs—advances that have helped overcome some of these obstacles.
However, this new study claimed to be one of the first successful attempts at creating a functional mouse embryo from scratch.
[...] The scientists created embryos by combining three different types of embryonic stem cells in the exact right combination and environment, allowing them to communicate with one another and mimicking what happens naturally during embryonic development.
The cells then began to form the fundamental structures of an embryo and progressed through the early stages of development, which included the formation of a yolk sac, brain, and beating heart. The embryos survived for up to eight and a half days.
Journal Reference:
Amadei, G., Handford, C.E., Qiu, C. et al. Synthetic embryos complete gastrulation to neurulation and organogenesis. Nature (2022). 10.1038/s41586-022-05246-3
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2022, @06:59PM (5 children)
As a physicist I have to say, "Fuck! Biology wins." Fantastically complex does not even come close to describing it. The only deep question in the Universe is, what is it about thermodynamics that makes these absurdly complex, outrageously difficult, impossibly inconceivable (pun!) sequences of chemistry, also the most efficient pathway to gaining entropy that makes them more or less inevitable. Everywhere.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday August 30 2022, @10:51PM (3 children)
Agreed. Everywhere. On Earth, that is.
Now, if we can find any anywhere else.
Or will the spacetime barrier confine us as surely as specimens in a jar?
Occam's razor leads me to the conclusion there is something out there that created me, patterned after recognition of my own ability to recognize things created by another mind versus things created by chaos and naturally occurring phenomena.
My woe is discriminating whether to do that which I feel guided to do versus that what I am told to do, considering my awareness of my own ignorance, as well as my awareness of the deviousness of others who want me to do their will.
Faith is spawned, as my own logic fails me .
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2022, @12:09AM (1 child)
> Occam's razor...
That's the dumb physicist in you. Thermodynamics favors spiraling complexity in its quest for increasing entropy. It has to happen in other words. I'll grant the Moon is sterile but it would be a leap of faith to assume Mars and Venus did not get on the bandwagon at some point in their existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2022, @02:44AM
Thanks for your POV.
My own logic has failed me, and I am scratching to make sense of it all. Nothing I see anymore makes any sense to me. Occam's razor is now pointing straight at me. I am probably losing it.
I can still do my science stuff just fine. No anamolies detected. But my social interface is so corrupted that very little makes it across anymore. Most comes across as wrong, and will be destructive if implemented.
To add insult to it all for me, my consultations with those who posit to have advanced wisdom in these matters usually quickly degrades to a marketing scheme having little, if anything, that has anything of truth to offer. Just another moneymaking scheme, blamed on me should I question it.
You know, that meme taught at seminary...I'm here to share the Good News that God's Tax Collector has chosen You. God expects you to tithe to me, to finance my sharing this Good News to the World!
While my own studies of history reveal religion has mostly empowered the elite by talking the poor out of what little they have by making exchanging peasant's resources for promised God will fulfill.
I'll post this AC. It's terribly off topic. But I felt so guided to post it. I won't be offended by the appropriate mod.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday September 01 2022, @06:32PM
I recommend reading Nick Lane's "The Vital Question".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2022, @02:03AM
If you were a US politician in a Red state pandering for votes, what would you say?