Scientists Take Step Toward Creating Artificial Embryos (reuters.com)

An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life. From a report: Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future -- a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development. The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain's Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow. But in new work published on Monday in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the scientists developed the structures further -- using three types of stem cells -- enabling a process called gastrulation, an essential step in which embryonic cells begin self-organizing into a correct structure for an embryo to form.

Comments

We should be playing God!

[Gravis Zero]

Since some coward has mod points and felt the need to post as AC and mod his own posts up just to say we "shouldn't be playing God," I felt it was only right to balance this by claiming we should be playing God.

Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can. If you think science is playing God then you should go back to the jungle with the other monkeys.