Without sperm and egg: scientists have created artificial embryos similar to human ones for the first time in the world
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For the first time in the world, American and British scientists have created artificial embryos that resemble embryos in the early stages of human development. For this, they did not need an egg and sperm, but stem cells, reports CNN with reference to The Guardian. Magdalena Zernichka-Getz, a professor of biology and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology and Cambridge University, said on June 14 that together with her team, they managed to create the first artificial human embryos. According to her, they were grown from human embryonic stem cells, which mainly develop the placenta, yolk sac and embryo in a woman’s body. Photo: Bailey Weatherbee/Carlos Gantner/Zernicka-Goetz Lab The embryo-like structures created are in the early stages of development because they do not have a brain or heart. At the same time, according to Zernichka-Goetz, they have germ cells that will further develop into eggs and sperm. “I want to emphasize that these are not human embryos, but they look a lot like them. This is an important step toward understanding why so many pregnancies fail because miscarriages occur around the time of development that we are building these embryo-like structures.” – said Magdalena Zernichka-Getz. She added that the study was approved by a reputable scientific journal, but not published. Zernichka-Goetz said the goal of her research was not to create life, but to prevent it from being lost and to understand why miscarriages happen. Previously, the Zernichka-Goetz team and a team of doctors from Israel described the creation of model embryo-like structures from mouse stem cells. After eight days of development, the brain, heart and intestinal tract began to develop in the grown embryos. James Briscoe, director of research at the Francis Crick Institute, noted that the creation of artificial embryos is currently illegal. “Unlike human embryos derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF), where there is an established legal framework, there are currently no clear rules governing stem cell-derived human embryo models. There is an urgent need for regulations to ensure basis for the creation and use of models of human embryos obtained from stem cells,” he said. We previously reported that in the US, children were born from embryos frozen 30 years ago. Read also: In the USA, a child was born from an embryo frozen 24 years before fertilization
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