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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00:00Humans have long been able to create a human embryo via in vitro fertilization or combining
00:09egg and sperm in a test tube and then inserting those back into the mother for maturation.
00:13But now, in a scientific first, researchers have created a synthetic human embryo without
00:18either of those two components.
00:20This is Professor Jacob Hanna of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
00:24According to him, the process of human embryo development is still very much a mystery as
00:29there are ethical limitations with regards to accessing and observing that material.
00:33That's why he says he and his team endeavored to create a synthetic human embryo analog
00:37so they could better observe the cellular maturation process.
00:40The research team used human stem cells that were donated years ago.
00:43Here's Professor Hanna to explain the process.
00:45What we do this time is we put them in a special media that takes them to really, really early
00:51stages so we can see that they start, cells start differentiating correctly, migrating
00:56and sorting themselves into the correct structure.
01:00And the farthest we could get is day 14 in human embryo development.
01:04Many are now decrying ethical concerns with this type of research.
01:07Still Hanna maintains they're not trying to make a human baby, simply attempting to better
01:11understand the process and perhaps help us better treat issues that arise during pregnancy.