Researchers hope these model embryos will shed light on the “black box” of human development, the period following 14 days after fertilization, which is the agreed limit for scientists to grow and study embryos in a lab. She said that to her knowledge, it was the first time a human model embryo had been created with three tissue layers. But she stressed that while it mimics some of the features of a natural embryo, it doesn’t have all of them. “They are embryo models, but they are very exciting because they are very looking similar to human embryos and very important path towards discovery of why so many pregnancies fail, as the majority of the pregnancies fail around the time of the development at which we build these embryo-like structures.”
“I just wish to stress that they are not human embryos,” Zernicka-Goetz said. She told CNN that the embryo-like structures her lab has created are also the first to have germ cells that would go on to develop into egg and sperm. They include cells that would typically go on to develop a yolk sac, a placenta and the embryo itself. The embryo-like structures that Zernicka-Goetz says her lab has created were grown from single human embryonic stem cells that were coaxed to develop into three distinct tissue layers, she said. Those “embryoids” showed the beginnings of a brain, heart and intestinal tract after about eight days of development. Zernicka-Goetz and her team, along with a rival team in Israel, had previously described creating model embryo-like structures from mouse stem cells. The research was first reported by The Guardian. Zernicka-Goetz, a professor of biology and biological engineering at CalTech and the University of Cambridge, said the research has been accepted at a well-regarded scientific journal but has not been published. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz described the work in a presentation Wednesday to the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston. There is an urgent need for regulations to provide a framework for the creation and use of stem cell derived models of human embryos,” James Briscoe, associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute, said in a statement.ĭr.
“Unlike human embryos arising from in vitro fertilization (IVF), where there is an established legal framework, there are currently no clear regulations governing stem cell derived models of human embryos. The pace of discoveries in this field and the growing sophistication of these models have alarmed bioethics experts as they push ever closer to the edge of life. How human gene editing is moving on after the CRISPR baby scandal Photo: Gregor Fischer/dpa (Photo by Gregor Fischer/picture alliance via Getty Images) Gregor Fischer/picture alliance/Getty Images , Germany, Berlin: A researcher handles a petri dish while observing a CRISPR/Cas9 process through a stereomicroscope at the Max-Delbrueck-Centre for Molecular Medicine.
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