A synthetic mouse embryo in the lab developed a beating heart

Cambridge Scientists have created artificial mouse embryos in a lab, without sperms or eggs, showing evidence of a beating heart and a brain.

The synthetic embryo was developed with stem cells and lasted only eight days. However, the research team said that the finding helped improve understanding of the earliest stages of organ development and why some pregnancies fail. Other scientists cautioned that though the technique looked promising, many hurdles still exist.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge have recently published their results in Nature. The Cambridge team has studied the early stages of pregnancy for the past decade, but so much is hidden due to the womb. 

Scientists found a way to get three types of stem cells from mice to grow and interact into embryo-like structures by mimicking natural processes in a laboratory. The researchers plan to work on keeping the synthetic embryos developing for a day or two longer, which is challenging to do without creating a synthetic placenta. Eventually, the ambition of researchers is to develop similar embryos from human stem cells. But it is still a long way and, ethically, much more complicated. Recently, researchers from Israel also published similar findings.