By StudyFinds Analysis –
Researchers have created human embryos by taking nuclei from ordinary skin cells, placing them into donated eggs, and fertilizing them with sperm. The work is a laboratory demonstration that shows what might eventually be possible for people who cannot produce viable eggs, though substantial scientific hurdles remain.
The team at Oregon Health & Science University used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, where a skin cell’s nucleus is placed into a donated egg that has had its own genetic material removed. After fertilization with sperm, these reconstructed cells produced embryos that developed for several days. While purely experimental and years from clinical use, the research published in Nature Communications shows an early demonstration of mitomeiosis, the team’s term for inducing a meiosis-like division in a somatic genome, which could one day help women without functional eggs have genetically related children.
“Infertility affects millions of individuals worldwide and is often caused by the absence of functional gametes,” the researchers wrote. For women, age-related decline in egg quality becomes a primary factor after the mid-thirties, and current fertility treatments cannot help those who lack viable eggs altogether.
