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First Human Eggs Grown In Laboratory (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Human eggs have been grown in the laboratory for the first time, say researchers at the University of Edinburgh. The team say the technique could lead to new ways of preserving the fertility of children having cancer treatment. It is also an opportunity to explore how human eggs develop, much of which remains a mystery to science. Experts said it was an exciting breakthrough, but more work was needed before it could be used clinically. Women are born with immature eggs in their ovaries that can develop fully only after puberty. It has taken decades of work, but scientists can now grow eggs to maturity outside of the ovary. It requires carefully controlling laboratory conditions including oxygen levels, hormones, proteins that simulate growth and the medium in which the eggs are cultured. But while the scientists have shown it is possible, the approach published in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction still needs refinement. In the paper, the researchers describe "how they took ovarian tissue from 10 women in their late twenties and thirties and, over four steps involving different cocktails of nutrients, encouraged the eggs to develop from their earliest form to maturity," reports The Guardian. "Of the 48 eggs that reached the penultimate step of the process, nine reached full maturity."
mexican style
Humans don't lay eggs. They're mammals.
What the hell is up with all the idiotic troll posts on this article? Who moved the rock?
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Are we running out of people?
We will always know, definitively, in the future, for OUR species, at least... which came first: it was the human, and not the egg. ;-)
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
That's pretty cool. The one unfortunate thing is that it still requires you to start out with viable eggs, albeit undeveloped viable eggs, which won't help anyone who has already undergone those sorts of medical treatments.
On the other hand, when we eventually do manage to grow eggs from normal cells, the medical ethics questions will get pretty crazy:
And so on.
As is often the case, I can't entirely tell if I'm joking or being serious with this comment. Moderate appropriately. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
In the year 2525, if man is still alive...if woman can survive....
Combine with this research and we'll soon have children made from artificial gametes. Now all we need are artificial wombs. Hey, what's a high-tech country whose women are too busy with their careers to go on maternity leave? Japan's a good bet for this. I would wonder if artificially-conceived children would violate China's one-child rule, but that was repealed already.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Me (watching 6 year old son play Minecraft): Who are all those people running around?
Son: Those are villagers.
Me: And where do they come from?
Son: Why, of course from eggs!
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
Granted it hasn't been tested on humans (not that we know of, maybe in China?) but it's only a matter of time. I'm sure there will be a market from celebrity women not willing to lose their figure over pregnancy and not wanting to go through the hassle of surrogacy.
So is it now feasible to talk about colonizing other worlds without having (living) humans going there? Send a spacecraft capable of creating it's own eggs (and having frozen sperm which I believe are easier to keep) and have the embryos develop and come to term in the artificial wombs. Decant them and have them raised by A.I. robots. If you're worried about genetic damage from long term exposure to cosmic rays made worse by high speed interstellar travel, consider creating the human genome from scratch (the Human Genome Write project started a year or two ago).
I think there were a number of science fiction stories that used this device to propagate the species over vast distances. In one, I believe the new humans eventually managed to create a self-sustaining colony but there were significant problems in organizing a society at first because of the psychological damage from having non-human parents. Anyway, in a last ditch save the species plan, it would allow for a much smaller number (zero?) of female astronauts to provide the necessary services.