Tag: cells

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XENOBOTS : When Cells decide to Live on their Own

Biology

Date : Mar., 2021

Source : QUANTA Magazine

An experiment in biology is opening up new territories for the understanding of living cells. Embryonic cells separated from their organism (African clawed frogs) seem to self-organize their structure and behavior, like strange living robots.

Why is this interesting? First, it shows that the DNA does not define the form, because the cluster of cells, bearing the same DNA than the original embryo, started to develop very differently. This takes us to the second point: the cells removed from the original embryo were presumably separated from the etheric double of the embryo, which is the one that guides distribution and organization of the different cells, and now had no model to follow. However, the cells showed some intelligence of their own as they developed in a very basic structure able to move around. 

Read more: QUANTA Magazine

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Creating Babies with no Egg or Sperm

Biology

Health and Medicine

Date: April, 2018

Source: New Scientist

A number of discoveries and researches have opened up the possibility of making babies without the use of egg or sperm from the parents. A bioengineer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yue Shao, published in 2017 his findings when he was still at the University of Michigan that the cells he was working with seemed to have assembled themselves into what appeared to be early-stage human. A year before that, Japanese researchers in Kyoto University were able to produce mice babies from eggs that were made from adult skin cells.
 
This has important implications on the possibility of having babies for people who are infertile. Coupled with growing research on the possibility of letting the fetus grow outside the body using artificial sacs, a new way of reproduction seems no longer remote.
 
Hank Greely, a bioethicist and lawyer at Stanford University in California, said, “My guess is this would be a major way of having babies 100 years from now.” 
 
​Source: New Scientist, April 14-20, 2018;​