Humans have long been able to create a human embryo via in vitro fertilization, or combining egg and sperm in a test tube and then inserting those back into the mother for maturation. BuHowever, in a scientific first, researchers have created a synthetic human embryo without either of those two components.
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00:00 Humans have long been able to create a human embryo via in vitro fertilization or combining
00:09 egg and sperm in a test tube and then inserting those back into the mother for maturation.
00:13 But now, in a scientific first, researchers have created a synthetic human embryo without
00:18 either of those two components.
00:20 This is Professor Jacob Hanna of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
00:24 According to him, the process of human embryo development is still very much a mystery as
00:28 there are ethical limitations with regards to accessing and observing that material.
00:32 That's why he says he and his team endeavored to create a synthetic human embryo analog
00:37 so they could better observe the cellular maturation process.
00:40 The research team used human stem cells that were donated years ago.
00:43 Here's Professor Hanna to explain the process.
00:45 What we do this time is we put them in a special media that takes them to really, really early
00:51 stages so we can see that they start, cells start differentiating correctly, migrating
00:56 and sorting themselves into the correct structure and the farthest we could get is day 14 in
01:02 human embryo development.
01:04 Many are now decrying ethical concerns with this type of research.
01:07 Still Hanna maintains they're not trying to make a human baby, simply attempting to
01:11 better understand the process and perhaps help us better treat issues that arise during
01:15 pregnancy.
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