The embryos survived for 8.5 days.
Scientists coaxed mouse stem cells to grow into synthetic embryos that began developing hearts and brains, just like the real thing.
"This has been the dream of our community for years and [a] major focus of our work for a decade, and finally, we've done it," senior study author Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a developmental and stem-cell biologist with labs at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement .
Zernicka-Goetz's research group, on the other hand, began with three mouse stem cell types, rather than starting with only naive cells. One type of stem cell gave rise to the embryo, while the other two morphed into the placental tissues and yolk sac. Throughout the experiment, they observed how these three stem cell types interacted, exchanging chemical messages and physically butting up against each other in the glass vials.
"This period of human life is so mysterious, so to be able to see how it happens in a dish — to have access to these individual stem cells, to understand why so many pregnancies fail and how we might be able to prevent that from happening — is quite special," Zernicka-Goetz said."We looked at the dialogue that has to happen between the different types of stem cell at that time — we've shown how it occurs and how it can go wrong.
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