Lab-Made Eggs Produce Healthy Mice

ananyo writes "Japanese researchers have coaxed mouse stem cells into becoming viable eggs that produce healthy offspring. Last year, the same team successfully used mouse stem cells to make functional sperm (other groups have produced sperm cells in vitro). The researchers used a cocktail of growth factors to transform stem cells into egg precursors. When they added these egg precursor cells to embryonic ovary tissue that did not contain sex cells, the mixture spontaneously formed ovary-like structures, which they then grafted onto natural ovaries in female mice. After four weeks, the stem-cell-derived cells had matured into oocytes. The team removed the oocytes from the ovaries, fertilized them and transplanted the embryos into foster mothers. The offspring that were produced grew up to be fertile themselves."

Comments

Are they as nutritious as organic mice???

[Anonymous Coward]

inquiring Pythons want to know.

That's all fine and good but...

[multicoregeneral]

Where are my cheese eating death machines?

Re:And we move forward

[Anonymous Coward]

And the caretaker robots that can create healthy human minds.

We've already invented TV.

Mice hatched from eggs

[wiwa]

My first thought on reading the headline was that they made mice that hatched from eggs. The actual discovery is much less impressive.