Studying human embryonic development is complicated for several reasons. Models derived from pluripotent stem cells representing distinct stages offer a path to studying this process.
Researchers who work with materials such as fetal tissue and human embryonic stem cells are facing new restrictions, the latest in a long line of regulations, that could impede important advances.
Removal of the 14-day limit for culturing human embryos is one of the main changes in the revised recommendations from the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
Two new papers describe the generation of so-called blastoids, which could avoid the use of embryonic cells and make studying early human development much more accessible.
The latest restrictions require scientists to submit more comprehensive grant applications, and those applications will go through more stringent ethics reviews.
The finding confirms that a cluster of cells that directs the fate of other cells in the developing embryo is evolutionarily conserved across the animal kingdom.
Scientists issue a call to reconsider the rules governing the creation of tissues, organs, and other structures made possible by recent advances in synthetic biology.
Since The Scientist published its first issue in October 1986, life-science research has transformed from a manual and often tedious task to a high-tech, largely automated process of unprecedented efficiency.
Tips on how to surmount the challenges of working with CRISPR to manipulate genes in human stems cells to study their function in specific diseases or to correct genetic defects in patient cells.