Zernicka-Goetz said that the aim of her research wasn’t to create life but to prevent its loss, understanding why embryos sometime fail to develop after fertilization and implantation.
“We know remarkably little about this step in human development, but it is a time where many pregnancies are lost, especially in an IVF setting,” Roger Sturmey, senior research fellow in maternal and fetal health at the University of Manchester in the UK, said in a statement.
“Currently, we can say that these ‘synthetic embryos’ share a number of features with blastocysts, but it is important to recognise that the way that synthetic embryos are formed is different to what happens when a normal embryo forms a blastocyst,” he said. “There is much work to be done to determine the similarities and differences between synthetic embryos and embryos that form from the union of an egg and a sperm.”
Zernicka-Goetz said that the aim of her research wasn’t to create life but to prevent its loss, understanding why embryos sometime fail to develop after fertilization and implantation.
“We know remarkably little about this step in human development, but it is a time where many pregnancies are lost, especially in an IVF setting,” Roger Sturmey, senior research fellow in maternal and fetal health at the University of Manchester in the UK, said in a statement.
“Currently, we can say that these ‘synthetic embryos’ share a number of features with blastocysts, but it is important to recognise that the way that synthetic embryos are formed is different to what happens when a normal embryo forms a blastocyst,” he said. “There is much work to be done to determine the similarities and differences between synthetic embryos and embryos that form from the union of an egg and a sperm.”