American biologists have developed a method for the development of germ cells with half the genetic set of somatic ones in the laboratory ("gametogenesis in vitro"). They talked about their work in the journal Science Translational Medicine. New technology could help people with infertility, including those caused by chemotherapy.
The creation of the method became possible thanks to numerous discoveries in recent years. So, in October 2016, Japanese biologists announced that they had managed to grow mice from eggs, which, in turn, were grown from somatic cells.
The method has so far been tested in mice, but its application is already raising legal and ethical questions. If the procedure is simple and inexpensive, it will become an almost unlimited source of germ cells and embryos. “For someone who opposes killing embryos, it will be difficult to say that you are going to grow 100 embryos so that you can use five of them for implantation,” commented one of the authors of the paper, a specialist in biotechnology and bioethics at the University of Cambridge, Glenn Cohen. According to him, it is necessary to develop a legal basis for the application of the method before it becomes widespread.