New York: Scientists from the University of Cambridge have created world’s first “synthetic” embryo that has a brain, a beating heart, and the building blocks for every other organ in the body, said a report from New York Post. The embryo has been created from mouse stem cells, the outlet further said.
According to a release from the university, instead of using eggs or sperm, a team lead by Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz created the embryo model using stem cells, which are the body’s stem cells and can differentiate into nearly any type of cell.
They used stem cells from mice to recreate the first stage of life and successfully developed an embryo with a brain, beating heart, and vitals for other organs.
The natural process of life was mimicked in the lab without eggs or sperm but with the body’s master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type in the body. The embryo was developed 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the same structures as a natural one.
The study published in the journal Nature states that their result demonstrates the self-organization ability of embryonic and two types of extra-embryonic stem cells to reconstitute mammalian development. The researchers induced expression of a particular set of genes and established a unique environment for their interactions and got the stem cells to ‘talk’ to each other.
What happened next was that the stem cells self-organised into structures that progressed through the successive developmental stages until they had a beating heart and the foundations of the brain, as well as the yolk sac where the embryo develops and gets nutrients from in its first weeks.
“Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that go on to make up the body,” Zernicka-Goetz, Professor in Mammalian Development and Stem Cell Biology in Cambridge’s Department of Physiology said, adding, “It’s just unbelievable that we’ve got this far. This has been the dream of our community for years, and a major focus of our work for a decade, and finally we’ve done it.”
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