A new article in the journal Nature reports sensational information that in the United States, for the sake of experiment, a real hybrid of a human and a chicken was created.
A group of stem cell researchers led by Dr. Ali Brivanlow of Rockefeller University in New York did the seemingly impossible - they successfully combined human and chicken cells into a single whole.
Until now, scientists cannot answer the question of how some cells in the developing embryo decide to become muscles or limbs, while others become bones and nerves. It is in order to better understand this mechanism that this precedent was created.
Human cells grown in a Petri dish from embryonic cells were added to a 12-hour-old chicken embryo, after which scientists for the first time were able to observe how all these cells self-organize. The researchers noted that as the chicken embryo grew, so-called organizer cells began to successfully form the chicken's second nervous system.
The 12-hour chicken embryo was chosen because, according to scientists, it "is a rough resemblance to a 14-day-old human embryo."
Countries such as the United States prohibit the use in experiments of human embryos that are more than 14 days old. But it is after 14 days that the "most interesting" thing begins in the embryo - stem cells appear. And this experiment, allegedly, can help circumvent the ethical problems associated with the use of human embryos in laboratory experiments and trace how stem cells develop further.
