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STEM CELLS

Synthetic mouse embryos

Nature Biotechnology volume 40, page 1327 (2022)Cite this article

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Cell https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.07.028 (2022)

Traditional developmental biology has long relied on natural embryos to peer into the mysteries of early development. But a newer approach, called synthetic embryology, has sought to reconstruct early developmental processes without using embryos derived from fertilized oocytes, relying instead on stem cells that emerge later in development. Writing in Cell, Hanna and coworkers have now coaxed naïve embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to form a complete embryo model containing both the embryo proper and the supportive extraembryonic tissue of the trophoblast and placenta. When cultured in a specially designed incubator, the synthetic embryos (sEmbryos) developed for eight days, well past implantation, gastrulation and early organogenesis.

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  1. Berlin, Germany

    Eleni Kotsiliti

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  1. Eleni Kotsiliti
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Kotsiliti, E. Synthetic mouse embryos. Nat Biotechnol 40, 1327 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01479-9

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