An international team of scientists has taken a step further towards creating artificial embryos using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life.
As per scientists the research result suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future and it will help scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development.
Earlier, under the supervision of Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain’s Cambridge University, the team has created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow.
But on Monday in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the new work revealed that the scientists developed the structure further, using three types of stem cells and the process is called gastrulation, an essential step in which embryonic cells begin self-organising into a correct structure for an embryo to form.
“Our artificial embryos underwent the most important event in life in the culture dish. They are now extremely close to real embryos,” Zernicka-Goetz said in a statement about the work.
