Mouse WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Researchers have created mouse embryonic stem cells that contain only one set of chromosomes, rather than two, according to a study publishing today (September 7) in Nature. The new cells could be used to do more rapid analysis of gene networks involved in mammalian development.
“This opens the opportunity to do genetics in mammalian systems on a more facile basis than has been possible previously,” said Allan Bradley, a stem cell geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who was not involved in the study. “In mammalian systems you’re dealing with a diploid genome, so when you’re now dealing with a haploid genome it significantly improves the ability to do experiments.”
Introducing random mutations into the genome and observing how the mutated cells function has ...
