Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS FEATURE

The labs growing human embryos for longer than ever before

New techniques are providing unprecedented views into human development — and raising ethical questions.
  1. Helen Shen

    1. Helen Shen is a science journalist based in Sunnyvale, California.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

For two tense weeks in mid-2013, developmental biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz was chasing a world record. She and her colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, were attempting to grow human embryos in the lab for longer than had ever been done before. They wanted to glean insights into how a tiny blob of cells transforms itself into a complex, multipart structure. Previous efforts had stalled after about a week, but Zernicka-Goetz knew there was much more to learn about human development beyond that point.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 559, 19-22 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05586-z

References

  1. Shahbazi, M. N. et al. Nature Cell Biol. 18, 700–708 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Deglincerti, A. et al. Nature 533, 251–254 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Fogarty, N. M. E. et al. Nature 550, 67–73 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Warmflash, A., Sorre, B., Etoc, F., Siggia, E. D. & Brivanlou, A. H. Nature Meth. 11, 847–854 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Etoc, F. et al. Dev. Cell 39, 302–315 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Heemskerk, I. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/202366 (2017).

  7. Martyn, I., Kanno, T. Y., Ruzo, A., Siggia, E. D. & Brivanlou, A. H. Nature 558, 132–135 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Shao, Y. et al. Nature Commun. 8, 208 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Harrison, S. E., Sozen, B., Christodoulou, N., Kyprianou, C. & Zernicka-Goetz, M. Science 356, eaal1810 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. de Bakker, B. S. et al. Science 354, aag0053 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Belle, M. et al. Cell 169, 161–173.e12 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links