Scientists use stem cells to create synthetic mouse embryos
Scientists have created “synthetic” mouse embryos from stem cells without a dad’s sperm or a mom’s egg or womb.
Scientists have created “synthetic” mouse embryos from stem cells without a dad’s sperm or a mom’s egg or womb.
The lab-created embryos mirror a natural mouse embryo up to 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the same structures, including one like a beating heart.
In the near term, researchers hope to use these so-called embryoids to better understand early stages of development and study mechanisms behind disease without the need for as many lab animals. The feat could also lay the foundation for creating synthetic human embryos for research in the future.
“We are undoubtedly facing a new technological revolution, still very inefficient … but with enormous potential,” said Lluís Montoliu, a research professor at the National Biotechnology Centre in Spain who is not part of the research. “It is reminiscent of such spectacular scientific advances as the birth of Dolly the sheep” and others.
This microscope image shows a synthetic mouse embryo with colors added to show brain and heart formation.Gianluca Amadei, Charlotte Handford via APA study published Thursday in the journal Nature, by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz at the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues, was the latest to describe the synthetic mouse embryos. A similar study, by Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and his colleagues, was published earlier this month in the journal Cell. Hanna was also a coauthor on the Nature paper.
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