Scientists create artificial human eggs and sperm

[TEPO]

So the jist of this is like if a six-year-old is goofing with Play-Doh and rolls it into a long strand proceeding to pretend it’s a snake and his mom tells the gossiping neighbor that “Little Timmy knows how to conjur sepents from clay” and then the whole neighborhood won’t attend Timmy’s birthday party because they think he’s got evil powers?

Yes.

 

[Faith1960]

Quite the deceptive headline. These cells were neither artificial nor gametic. I’m curious if the stem cells used were embryonic or iPS (adult, already differentiated cells reverse-aged to be stem cells). Unfortunately Pop Sci reporting has a tendency of not only producing misleading titles but also failing to provide a citation to the original publication.

So these arent synthetic cells but stem cells they are using?

 

[Faith1960]

So these arent synthetic cells but stem cells they are using?

Anyone?

 

[Brandon_Cal]

So these arent synthetic cells but stem cells they are using?

There’s no such thing as a synthetic biological cell. Embryonic stem cells were harvested, induced to express the SOX17 gene, and a primordial germ line was the result. This was then replicated with already differentiated, adult skin cells. Skin cells were reprogramed to “go back” to being pluripotent stem cells through a process called Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Transcription. Once the adult skin cells were once again pluripotent stem cells the procedure was the same as that of the embryonic stem cells.

My objections provided in my prior posts to this article may be perceived as pedantry, but I think the precision in terminology is important. Calling these primordial germ cells ‘synthetic’ is like calling GMOs ‘synthetic organisms’ as if they aren’t real organisms, or calling plants grown in a greenhouse ‘synthetic plants’. These cells are very much real cells and 100% indistinguishable from so-called natural cells. Calling them synthetic lends the false impression that either parts of or the entirety of the cells are fashioned with synthetic materials. Calling these primordial germ cells ‘eggs’ and ‘sperm’ is an even more egregious mistake. It’s akin to calling a newborn baby an adult human.

 

[TCR74]

Artificial live have no souls and therefore make great soldiers to be used and killed off. At least that is one one nut job told me. There are people out there I really worry about.