Scientists Use Stem Cells to Generate Human Eggs

The article says that the current research uses stem cells from women's ovaries to create the egg, but once they develop the technique, they will be able to use any stem cell (e.g., from the skin).

That's quite a stretch. Who said that? From the article:

"Even if the research is validated, the immediate use of the cells in question would be to generate egg cells for research use, like testing the effects of drugs. Use in fertility treatments would be far off, Dr. Albertini said, because cells grown in the laboratory often develop abnormalities, a problem that would need correction before any egg could be accepted for fertilization."

That's the only sentence in the article with the word "any." Adult stem cells are fairly differentiated. Reverting to an oocyte would be quite a trick, IMHO. Check out induced pluripotent stem cells.

That's quite a stretch. Who said that?

Shinya Yamanaka, one of the pioneers in stem cell research, said "In theory, two men could use this technology to have a baby, because you could take skin cells and use them to make an egg."

Yamanaka led the team that turned adult mouse skin cells into mouse stem cells. In the Dec. 15, 2007 issue of New Scientist, he spoke about it in an interview. (The article is online, but you need to be a subscriber or pay for the single article.)

My brother told me about it back in Dec. 2007.

Excerpt:

Interview: Kyoto's Stem Cell Pioneer
by Linda Geddes

15 December 2007
Magazine issue 2634

Last month, Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University showed he could transform adult skin cells into cells akin to human embryonic stem cells. The method, which involves inserting genetic material that makes the cells' development run backwards, opens the door to stem cells specific to patients, which could be used to repair damaged organs or fight diseases such as Parkinson's and diabetes crucially, all without the need to destroy human embryos. Linda Geddes visited Yamanaka in Kyoto and found him excited at his breakthrough but concerned over its ethical implications.

[snip]

Geddes: Are there any other scenarios that could raise ethical dilemmas?

Yamanaka: I'm not sure whether we should try to make eggs from male iPS cells and vice versa. In theory, two men could use this technology to have a baby, because you could take skin cells and use them to make an egg. [my emphasis]

[snip]

The genetic-children-of-homosexuals angle is not in the NYT article posted above. But it is being discussed by researchers in the field, and is a logical future extension of this recent success at creating human eggs from ovary stem cells.

They had to start with harvested ovaries, probably ovaries of questionable quality in the first place, i.e. most of these folks probably needed sexual reassignment surgery. Folks can be born with ambiguous genitalia.

I'll take science over science fiction any day. You should have checked that link about induced pluripotent stem cells, Shinya Yamanaka's bailiwick.

Flaw in induced-stem-cell model - Adult cells do not fully convert to embryonic-like state.

They are not even close to an embryonic like state, thanks to epigenetics. You have made an assumption that they can reverse molecular biology to the most primitive state of progenitor oocyte cells with half the number of chromosomes of adult cells.

This is reverse engineering at a molecular level. If they were so competent at it, the hundreds of different kinds of cancers, just by cell type, God knows how many other differences there may be at the molecular level, would be a thing of the past. Speculation is one thing. Here we have too many unknown unknowns.

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