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."

Comments

Silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans don't lay eggs. They're mammals.

As long as we remember THIS day...

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

We will always know, definitively, in the future, for OUR species, at least... which came first: it was the human, and not the egg. ;-)

But it still requires ovaries.

[dgatwood]

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:

• Should there be an upper age limit to prevent high rates of genetic defects?
• Should it be illegal to create a baby with an unknowing girl by stealing a strand of her hair?
• When it eventually happens anyway, what legal rights will the child have?
• If you are asked to construct eggs from XY cells from someone who has undergone a gender change, are you ethically required to tell her husband?
• When shaking the hand of your date, is it appropriate to wear a glove to prevent conception?

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

Re:But it still requires ovaries.

[rtb61]

Actually totally incorrect. You start out as a viable egg, women start out as a viable egg. Up comes mr sperm and it is consumed and it's genetic resource is strip mined to trigger further grow. So women start with zero eggs and then the DNA process triggers the creation of the egg creation structure and juvenile eggs are made. Likely egg production and cancer have some core similarities, that growth from something else. A none egg cell, turning into an immature egg cell and growing from there. As for the other stuff, the human individual with society has inalienable rights, it is a question of when they start and the problem is for women failing to get pregnant of course men masturbating. As soon as they are viable seems to be the defining moment and not too much before that. Either that it make it illegal for men's sperm to die outside of a women's vagina, apart from proven accidental discharge but that is bizzaro world stuff.

Minecraft becoming reality

[grungeman]

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!