Scientists have created synthetic embryos! (PICTURES+VIDEO)   

No sperm, egg or uterus

In a world first, scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel created “synthetic embryos” from mouse cells, without using sperm, egg or uterus. And while the term “synthetic embryos” may sound dystopian and scary, the goal is to someday be able to create human organs from scratch. Scientists realize that this development creates ethical dilemmas that must be discussed.

Cells learn what their purpose is by reading the chemical signals the body sends them. Scientists have been able to mimic these signals to turn stem cells into instruments to study tiny brains for drug testing, for example.

Most of the synthetic embryos died quickly, but some managed to survive for 8.5 days, about half the development of a mouse embryo. 95% of them were similar to normal mouse embryos and had developed placentas, and the development of the spine, brain, intestinal system and heart had also begun.

Because synthetic embryos are created from stem cells instead of fertilization, it is easier to scale up the process by producing many embryos at once. So if we can trick these cells into creating the beginnings of organs, studying them may reveal the building blocks for building organs from scratch and transplanting them into humans without the need for a donor.

The next challenge is to understand how stem cells know what to do, how they become organs, and how they find their way to where they need to be inside an embryo.

But we’re not going to see human embryos anytime soon. Synthetic mouse embryos are not capable of developing into a live mouse. Furthermore, we know much less about human embryos, which take much longer to develop and are much larger.

Now is a good time to think about the best legal and ethical framework for this research and the use of human synthetic embryos by upgrading the current laws.