University of Cambridge researchers achieved a breakthrough in stem cell research resulting in generation of important life events not witnessed before in artificial embryo . 3 different types of mouse stem cells were put into a dish and coaxed into simulating gastrulation which is one of the first events to happen during embryonic stages indicating it will be alive, as published in Nature Cell Biology.
Although most likely not accurate to say life was created, more so a snapshot of something resembling what happens when life is created; making the building blocks of what potentially could become a mouse out of 3 stems cells, to advance further they would need to be implanted into the body of a mother or an artificial placenta.
Study goals are not to create mice, rather to gain insights into early life development which may lead to advances in understandings of what happens during the period pregnant women are at highest risk for miscarriage, according to the researchers.
By scaling the efforts from mice to men researchers can apply the equivalent to human stem cell types to study the very earliest events in human embryo development without having to use natural human embryos. Early stages of embryo development are when large proportions of pregnancies are lost that little is known about, having a way to simulate embryonic development in culture dishes could make it possible to learn what is happening during this period and why the process sometimes fails.
Although from a purely scientific point of view this work holds great potential, while others may raise some ethical questions such as if it is possible to create life from scratch should we? Using this work scientists could learn what happens beyond day 14 in human pregnancies without using human embryos. What if this becomes applied to humans as development of artificial fetuses leads to eradication of miscarriages or to bring it further yet the end of childhood developmental disorders and diseases? What is the difference between an artificial fetus more than 14 days old and a fetus that has been developed from frozen egg/sperm combinations? Questions can go on and on bouncing back and forth from good to bad in both point of views, and in all honesty the debate may never end.
