Scientists Bred Healthy Mice Using Artificial Eggs and Ovaries Made From Stem Cells
The baby mice popcorning around their cages looked utterly normal. But in fact, they’re a technological wonder: they were born from bioengineered eggs matured inside a man-made ovary. Even crazier, both the eggs and the ovary were grown from stem cells.
The experiment is the brainchild of Dr. Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kyushu University, who’s led the pursuit of making gametes—sperm and eggs—without the constraints of a living body. If adapted for humans, these wild reproductive pursuits are bound to shake up our entire conception of the beginning of life—similar to the way “test-tube” babies did when in vitro fertilization (IVF) was first introduced.
Hayashi dreams of even bigger possibilities. Because stem cells can be rapidly created from skin or other cells, they are an endless source of raw material to make sperm and egg cells. If fully functional, these basic components of reproduction can merge into a fertilized egg inside a test tube, be transplanted into a surrogate, and birth a new generation without ever seeing testes or ovaries.
“This technical breakthrough…holds enormous potential for germ cell research,” commented Drs. Lin Yang and Huck-Hui Ng at the Genome Institute of Singapore, who were not involved in the study.
