Scientists have taken a step towards creating eggs from skin cells

Scientists have taken a step towards creating eggs from skin cells

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Scientists are one step closer to creating eggs for artificial fertilization from skin cells. They adapted the procedure used to create Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal.

It is reported The Guardian citing a study published in a scientific journal Science Advances.

The procedure can help infertile people who have lost their gametes due to disease, aging or cancer treatment to have genetically related children.

It also opens up opportunities for male couples: their DNA can be combined in a fertilized egg that is carried by a surrogate mother.

A group of American scientists conducted an experiment to create an egg on mice. They removed the nucleus from the donor egg and transferred the nucleus from the skin cell to it. The researchers then cultured the egg so that it lost half its chromosomes. The creation of such an egg takes two to three hours.

According to the scientists, the advantage of this method is that it avoids the long cultivation used in other approaches to reprogram the cell. During it, there is a risk of a large number of genetic changes.

“Before the start of clinical application of this technology, another ten years may pass. In addition, it will require a thorough assessment of safety, effectiveness and ethical aspects.

However, its potential to address fertility issues holds great promise for the future of reproductive medicine.” – said Aleksey Mikhalchenko from the Oregon Health and Science University.

Dolly the sheep was created in 1996 with the help of a similar process – the transfer of the nuclei of somatic cells. Scientists extracted a nucleus from a mammary gland cell and combined it with an egg cell, resulting in an embryo that carried all the sheep’s DNA.

In 2022, during the experiments of other American scientists with eggs, three live mice were born. However, the share of their success was less than 1%.

We will remind, scientists for the first time in the world created artificial embryos similar to human ones without eggs and sperm.