Biologists trying to create laboratory models of the early growth of a human embryo have taken a major step forward.
In preprints posted online on Thursday and Friday, four research teams reported using various kinds of human stem cells, some genetically modified, to create ersatz embryos that closely resemble real embryos that are up to 14 days old, replicating a period in human development that is very difficult to study.
Besides clarifying early human development, the new embryo models could help researchers better understand birth defects and probe the safety of drugs used during pregnancy. But they pose fraught issues. U.K. law, for example, prohibits research on donated in virto fertilization embryos that are beyond 14 days old. But because these new models are formed from human stem cells, not eggs and sperm, that law does not apply to them.
One way in which researchers have tried to delve into events after the blastocyst stage is by producing ersatz embryos from mouse stem cells. Last year, for example, Hanna and colleagues grew such cells intothat sported a beating heart, the rudiments of a brain and spinal cord, and incipient muscles.
Some researchers in the field argue that this group’s synthetic embryos, which the scientists describe in a preprinton Thursday, do not duplicate natural embryos as closely as the mimics produced by Hanna and colleagues because they are missing some cell lineages and their organization is not well-defined.
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