Saturday, December 27, 2014
Scientists in Cambridge using skin cells to create a simple form of artificial sperm and egg cells. These findings will answer the problem of age-related pregnancy and fertility.
Researchers at Cambridge make sex cells by culturing the early stages of human embryonic stem cells with very carefully during the week. They seem to be successful, as indicated by the same procedure can convert adult skin tissue becomes pioneer of sperm and egg cells. This study increases the prospect of making sex cells that are genetically matched to the patient.
The cells must have the potential to grow into mature sperm and egg cells. The next step researchers will inject the cells into the ovaries or testes of mice to see if they are fully grown animals.
British law forbids fertility clinics in the UK, using artificial sperm and egg cells to treat couples who have problems with fertility. But if the law was revised, allowing skin cells taken from patients and transformed into sperm or eggs are genetically identical to be used in IVF treatment.
Skin cells from a woman can only be used to make egg, because it did not have a Y chromosome while skin cells from male theoretically may turn into eggs and sperm. But according to the research team leader at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge Azim Surani said, on the basis of current knowledge it is not possible.
"There's no way we can take these cells and make it a gamete cells, but we never know in the future," said Surani in The Guardian.
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Previous researchers have developed and seltelur sperm from stem cells of mice, they are now struggling to do the same with human cells. In 2012, Japanese scientists create mice eggs from stem cells and use them to make a baby rat.
Three years earlier, scientists at the University of Newcastle claims to have made human sperm from stem cells. But their papers withdrawn amid accusations of plagiarism. In 2002, US researchers produce puppies male and female rats of male stem cells.
The research team led by Surani tried several different approaches to cultures of stem cells into sperm and egg pioneer. During five days, the scientists add natural chemicals that stimulate cell growth factor and direct development towards the right.
"It's very fast. We now can take embryonic stem cell lines and after we get them in the right conditions, we can make the primordial cells within 5-6 days," said Surani. Details of the study, in collaboration with the Weizmann Institute in Israel, published in the journal Cell.
By studying cells, the scientists hope to unravel how the sperm and egg cells work and grow into mature sex cells. The ability to make sperm and egg cells from the patient's skin does not yet mature, making them able to compare how they evolve.
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