Earlier this month, Israeli scientists shared their achievements that sparked a new controversy around the world. For the first time in history, a mouse embryo was created without sperm and eggs, and this embryo continued to develop without being in a natural womb environment. Today, news of a much greater success came from the other side of the world, the USA.

The team of scientists from Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology managed to create mouse embryos without the need for sperm and eggs with stem cells, just like the Israeli team. Moreover, the heart of this embryo began to beat, and the foundations of the brain and other organs in the body were laid.

The most developed artificial embryo to date:

To create the embryo, the scientists took help from three different types of stem cells, which play a role in the early development of mammals. Stem cells ‘talked’ to each other, as scientists describe them. While one of these stem cells directly led to the creation of a living thing, the other two played a role in the growth of the internal organs of the living thing.

These three stem cells were put together, and the scientists saw that their new model could create a nervous system in the same way as naturally developing mouse embryos. The embryo turned into the most artificially developed embryo to date.

Stem cells formed structures that would become the basis for the beating hearts and brain in the embryo as time passed. It was even shared that there is even a yolk sac in the embryo, where an embryo develops and receives nutrients in its first weeks. Although the new method is a big step for the scientific world, humanity is still far from creating a new living thing without sperm and eggs. The next stage of science will be to ensure that the internal organs that will form in artificial embryos are healthy, functioning and developing.

The research was published in the journal Nature.