For perhaps the first time in history, scientists have been able to study a three-week-old fetus, giving them a rare glimpse of an early and much-needed stage of human development. Studied an embryo of age that had been donated by a woman who had to terminate her pregnancy.
Experts say that researchers knew very little about this stage of development because human embryos of this age are not found at all. Most women do not even know that they are pregnant until three weeks of pregnancy. In addition, due to decades-old global guidelines, until recently, human embryos were prohibited from growing in laboratories for more than 14 days. The new study is published in the journal 'Nature'.
Historical Research This study describes "gastrulation", which begins about 14 days after fertilization and lasts about a week. At this time the embryo is the size of a poppy seed. "It is a process by which different types of cells are born," said the study's lead investigator, Shankar Srinivas, an expert in developmental biology at the University of Oxford, who worked on the research with colleagues in England and Germany. Is
He further explained, "During gastrulation, not only do different types of cells come to the fore, but they also take their place by going to different places to make the body. After that they do their own work so that they get the right organs from them. The researchers found a variety of cells, including red blood cells and the "primordial germ cells" that make up eggs or sperm.
However, Srinivas said that the researchers did not see the neuron, which means that at this stage the embryo does not have the means to understand its environment. Medical help Oxford University officials said that this stage of development of the body in humans has never been mapped in this way before today. The authors of the research hope that their work will not only shed light on this stage of development Rather, scientists will be able to learn from nature how to convert stem cells into cells with the help of which injuries or diseases can be cured.
Robin Lowell-Badge, a specialist in stem cells at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said allowing human embryos to work in laboratories for more than 14 days would not only be extremely helpful in knowing how we normally develop, We'll also understand "how the mess gets done" It is also quite common for embryos to be destroyed during or after gastrulation, he added. Rather, if there is a slight disturbance, there are birth abnormalities in the body or the fetus is also destroyed. Daniel Sulamasi, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, said that now more research will be done on older embryos. CK/AA(AP)
