科学家近日制造出人造精子和卵子雏形

 

Researchers in Cambridge made the early-stage sex cells by culturing human embryonic⁴ stem cells under carefully-controlled conditions for a week.

 

They followed the success by showing that the same procedure can convert adult skin tissue into precursors⁶ for sperm and eggs, raising the prospect⁷ of making sex cells that are genetically⁸ matched to patients.

 

The cells should have the potential to grow into mature sperm and eggs, though this has never been done in the lab before. The next step for the researchers will be to inject the cells into mouse ovaries or testes to see if they fully⁵ develop in the animals.

 

British law prohibits fertility clinics in the UK from using artificial sperm and eggs to treat infertile⁹ couples. But if the law was revised, skin cells could potentially be taken from patients and turned into genetically identical sperm or eggs for use in IVF therapies.

 

Skin cells from a woman could only be used to make eggs because they lack the Y chromosome¹⁰. Those from a male might theoretically be turned into eggs as well as sperm, but Azim Surani, who led the work at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, said that on the basis of current knowledge, that was unlikely.

 

Researchers have made sperm and eggs from rodent¹¹ stem cells before but have struggled do the same with human cells. In 2012, Japanese scientists created mouse eggs from stem cells and used them to make baby mice. Three years earlier, scientists at Newcastle University claimed to have made human sperm from stem cells, but their scientific paper was retracted¹² amid allegations of plagiarism¹³. In 2002, US researchers produced male and female mouse pups from male stem cells.

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