An Israeli-British group of scientists said it was successful in the laboratory of transforming adult human skin cells into primary sex cells. In other words, researchers were able to produce embryonic stem cells for the production of sperm and eggs. One day this discovery will help infertile couples have children.
According to the authors of the work, this is the first case of the return of human cells to the early stage of their development. The aging process of adult cells has been reversed by a research team from the Weizmann Institute and the University of Cambridge. The study can shed light on the early stages of embryonic development and solve fertility problems.
The formation of embryonic stem cells occurs at an early stage of embryonic development. The fetus, as is known, develops from a single cell (zygote), formed as a result of the fusion of the mother's egg cell and the father's sperm cell. Then the zygote is divided into two identical cells, each of which is still two and so on until differentiation, during which germ cells appear - spermatozoa in men and egg cells in women.
Under normal conditions, cell differentiation is an irreversible process. For many years, researchers have tried to create primary germ cells (gonocytes) in the Petri dish, which are progenitor for gametes.
In 2006, Japanese scientists managed to get induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), that is, to reverse the development process of adult cells back to the initial level, which theoretically allows them to differentiate into any type of cell. Successful tests on mice, however, failed on humans.
For unknown reasons, mouse embryonic cells can be in the test tube for a long time in the state of stem cells. Human induced pluripotent stem cells are usually not stored under laboratory conditions and are differentiated.
The research team learned how to manage the genetic mechanism responsible for cell differentiation. So, they received human stem cells similar to mouse cells, which are able to transform into primary germ cells. The method was tested and improved jointly by two research laboratories.
The study also discovered the Sox17 gene, which controls the process of differentiation of stem cells into primary sex cells in humans. In mice, this gene is absent.
The study was published in the scientific journal Cell.
The article is based on materials .
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