Researchers Create Artificial Eggs, Chimeric Sperm, and Synthetic Embryos

Artificial eggs created using skin cells, sperm generated from implanted stem cells, and synthetic embryos are all recent breakthroughs made by different teams of researchers in the field of reproductive science. All of these advances took place in mice, but the researchers believe that their findings can eventually be applied to human reproduction.

First, earlier this year a research team at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), led by biologist Shoukrat Mitalipov, reported the birth of three mouse pups that had developed from artificial eggs. Creating artificial eggs involves installing the genetic material from one mouse’s skin cells into the eggs of another mouse from which its genetic material had been removed. Most mature cells contain two sets of chromosomes, whereas unfertilized eggs contain only one. Mitalipov and his team developed a biochemical recipe that coaxes the eggs into losing half of their new chromosomes and then fertilized the artificial eggs with mouse sperm.

“The OHSU team is now adapting those methods to see if they can generate artificial human eggs with properly separated chromosomes,” reports STAT. “If successful, they plan to then fertilize those eggs with sperm and grow the resulting embryos in the lab for five or six days to see if they develop normally.” If the technique proves to be safe, the creation of artificial human eggs could one day be used to treat infertility and even enable same-sex couples to have genetically related children.

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