[Animal Modeling]-Mouse stem cells can form "embryonic" structures in vitro

  A team of European scientists published a medical paper in the British journal Nature, claiming that they only used mouse stem cells to cultivate structures similar to early embryos in petri dishes. It provides researchers with a cell culture model in early development and helps determine the key processes that support this important life stage.

  After cleavage, the fertilized mammalian egg is divided into many small cells, and the hollow sphere composed of these small cells is called the blastocyst. In fact, at the blastocyst stage, not all cells begin to differentiate, but after the embryo. The globular structure of the blastocyst is composed of a trophoblast, an internal cell group and a fluid-filled blastocyst cavity filled with a large number of embryo cells. Stem cell lines always come from trophoblast cells and germ cells. Now, a study by Nicolasivron, a scientist at the Institute of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and his colleagues have shown that these two types of cells interact and are similar in vitro. It has been shown that blastocysts of worms can be formed, which they call "blastoids". This "blastocyst-like" shape resembles a 3.5-day-old blastocyst and shows a similar pattern of gene activity. Like blastocysts, "blastocysts" are formed when internal stem cells send signals that induce trophoblast cell development.

  During normal development, trophoblast cells continue to form the placenta, so researchers say their model can help people understand how the placenta forms and how embryos are transferred into the endometrium. I think the research related to embryonic stem cells has been controversial. After these structures similar to those in early embryos are transferred to the uterus, the spherical structures trigger remodeling events, similar to those that occur when implanted in the uterine wall. Although they cannot grow into mature embryos, they provide the scientific community with early development of cell culture models and help clarify the key processes that support this important life stage.