'Synthetic mouse embryos' made in a lab, without a mom and dad

Scientists, in a unique achievement, have created “synthetic” mouse embryos - that is without a father's sperm and a mother's egg.

The research team, led by Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, instead used stem cells the body's master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type in the body.

These embryos made in the lab mirror a natural mouse embryo up to 8 ½ days after fertilization. They contain the same structures, and even include something like a beating heart and even a head-like structure.


"Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that go on to make up the body," ANI quoted Goetz as saying.

In short, the stem cells self-organised into structures that progressed through the successive developmental stages until they had beating hearts and the foundations of the brain.

The next step in the experiment, which was done at the California Institute of Technology and published in the journal Nature, is take it past the 8 ½ day stage and make the mouse embryo develop till 20 days.

Scientists said the best ones they developed in the labs were “indistinguishable” from natural mouse embryos

Scientists hope to use these so-called embryoids to study the early stages of development and the mechanisms behind disease without using lab animals.

This achievement could also be the first step for creating synthetic human embryos for research in the future - though scientists say they don't see it happening anytime soon.

Other scientists have already used human stem cells to create a “blastoid, ” a structure mimicking a pre-embryo. Such work is subject to ethical concerns.

But there us another use. If the methods in this study are shown to be successful with human stem cells in future, they could also be used to guide the development of synthetic organs for patients awaiting transplants.