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's getting creepy.
Lot's of cool stuff can come from this, but so can lots of bad stuff guessed at in movies....
Life created from eggs made from skin cells
By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News
Newborn mice The resulting mice were fully fertile
Stem cells made from skin have become "grandparents" after generations of life were created in experiments by scientists in Japan.
The cells were used to create eggs, which were fertilised to produce baby mice. These later had their own babies.
If the technique could be adapted for people, it could help infertile couples have children and even allow women to overcome the menopause.
But experts say many scientific and ethical hurdles must be overcome.
Healthy and fertile
Stem cells are able to become any other type of cell in the body from blood to bone, nerves to skin.
Last year the team at Kyoto University managed to make viable sperm from stem cells. Now they have performed a similar feat with eggs.
They used stem cells from two sources: those collected from an embryo and skin-like cells which were reprogrammed into becoming stem cells.
The first step, reported in the journal Science, was to turn the stem cells into early versions of eggs.
A "recons uted ovary" was then built by surrounding the early eggs with other types of supporting cells which are normally found in an ovary. This was transplanted into female mice.
Surrounding the eggs in this environment helped them to mature.
IVF techniques were used to collect the eggs, fertilise them with sperm from a male mouse and implant the fertilised egg into a surrogate mother.
Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi, from Kyoto University, told the BBC: "They develop to be healthy and fertile offspring."
Those babies then had babies of their own, whose "grandmother" was a cell in a laboratory dish.
Devastating blow
The ultimate aim of the research is to help infertile couples have children. If the same methods could be used in people then cells in skin could be turned into an egg. Any resulting child would be genetically related to the mother.
However, Dr Hayashi said that was still a distant prospect: "I must say that it is impossible to adapt immediately this system to human stem cells, due to a number of not only scientific reasons, but also ethical reasons."
He said that the level of understanding of human egg development was still too limited. There would also be questions about the long-term consequences on the health of any resulting child.
Dr Evelyn Telfer, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "It's an absolutely brilliant paper - they made oocytes [eggs] from scratch and get live offspring. I just thought wow! The science is quite brilliant."
However, she warned that this had "no clinical relevance" as there were still too many gaps in understanding about how human eggs developed.
"If you can show it works in human cells it is like the Holy Grail of reproductive biology," she added.
Prof Robert Norman, from the University of Adelaide, said: "For many infertile couples, finding they have no sperm or eggs is a devastating blow.
"This paper offers light to those who want a child, who is genetically related to them, by using personalised stem cells to create eggs that can produce an offspring that appears to be healthy.
"It also offers the potential for women to have their own children well past menopause raising even more ethical issues.
"Application to humans is still a long way off, but for the first time the goal appears to be in sight."
Dr Allan Pacey, from the British Fertility Society and the University of Sheffield, said: "What is remarkable about this work is the fact that, although the process is still quite inefficient, the offspring appeared healthy and were themselves fertile as adults."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19827287
's getting creepy.
Lot's of cool stuff can come from this, but so can lots of bad stuff guessed at in movies....
Definitely weird happening today... can I just get some nanomachines that stop aging and automatically cure all diseases and cancer already?
"cure all diseases and cancer already"
just as cancer researchers were benefiting from DNA analyis of tumors and molecular/cellular research for targeted rather than shotgun treatment, "We're broke"
San Antonio area cancer researchers worried about deep federal cuts
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantoni...searchers.html
spin baby spin
blood-sucking, cancer-curing micromachines are only for oligarch one-percenters and VRWC members.
TB
gfy
For s sake, man. I am not saying this is not news worthy but wtf does if have to do with stem cell breakthroughs. It's medical science I guess but one is a stem cell breakthrough in Japan and the other is cancer research federal funding in Texas.
Now tell me to go myself and take your to your conspiracy thread.
I was reading about some bioethics stuff. A logical step from this is creating eggs/sperm with specific DNA sequences ie desired genes. Aldous Huxley and all that.
blood-sucking, cancer-curing micromachines are only for oligarch one-percenters and VRWC members.
gfy
once again its all about ethics gettin in the way of progressing to out limits....when was the last time someone professionally gave a about ethics?
Holy ! You saw through my bbs stealth suit!blood-sucking, cancer-curing micromachines are only for oligarch one-percenters and VRWC members.
gfy
GATTACA GATTACA GATTACA!
Somebody didn't read the article.
lolz
I won't believe this happened unless the scientists produce a birth certificate.
Also, was the "grandmother" cell in the country legally? If not, I say kick her and her viable offspring out of the country. No more freeloaders!
Good stuff here Fuzzy. Particularly interesting to me is the ability to change the epithelial skin cells back to precursor stems, then have them differentiate once again into the desired cell type. Although the reproductive applications of this research fall in the "gray ethics" area I see many potential hematologic and neurologic applications. Very cool.
Speaking of "skin"
I wonder how many Atheists will skin their knees jumping off the the Darwin wagon.
So now we can play God and Create life?
Thanks for proving Creation and the existence of a God all in one link.
I think Chief Engineer La Forge is hailing the captain from your signature.
Good stuff here Fuzzy. Particularly interesting to me is the ability to change the epithelial skin cells back to precursor stems, then have them differentiate once again into the desired cell type. Although the reproductive applications of this research fall in the "gray ethics" area I see many potential hematologic and neurologic applications. Very cool.
Truth be told, your other posts along these lines inspires me to do the same.
Good stuff here Fuzzy. Particularly interesting to me is the ability to change the epithelial skin cells back to precursor stems, then have them differentiate once again into the desired cell type. Although the reproductive applications of this research fall in the "gray ethics" area I see many potential hematologic and neurologic applications. Very cool.
I was reading something in Nature about how they took stem cells from mice and got them to grow around a lattice into an artificial jellyfish.
http://www.nature.com/news/artificia...-cells-1.11046
They could not get the thing to flex autonomously but they could get it to mimic the motions of a jelly fish by use of an electric field. Bloody amazing.
"the offspring appeared healthy and were themselves fertile as adults."
I would let some other lady try to grow a human being from one these synthetic eggs, and then wait a few decades, and 1000s of human experiments, before deciding to try it myself. Even natural ova impregnated by IVF, etc yield human beings with elevated risk for defects and diseases. What's their primary motivation here? Scientific curiosity and learning, or $Bs in license fees?
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