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A step closer to making the mother of stem cells

In the earliest stages of mammalian development, individual cells possess the unrestricted potential to form a new organism. Researchers are closing in on the goal of growing these cells in the laboratory.
  1. Martin F. Pera

    1. Martin F. Pera is at the Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609, USA.

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The evanescent state of totipotency — the ability of a cell to form every other cell type required to generate a new organism — is difficult to study in developing embryos. Finding a way to propagate totipotent cells in culture would open up fresh avenues for research into early development. Cultured totipotent cells could also be powerful tools for deriving genetically modified animals for research or agricultural biotechnology, or for the conservation of endangered species, and could help to improve assisted-conception techniques in humans. A paper in Nature1, together with two other studies, in Cell Stem Cell2 and Nature3, describes substantial progress towards the goal of generating renewable cultures of totipotent stem cells in the laboratory.

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Nature 617, 683-684 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01932-4

References

  1. Hu, Y. et al. Nature 617, 792–797 (2022).

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  2. Yang, M. et al. Cell Stem Cell 29, 400–418 (2022).

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  3. Mazid, M. A. et al. Nature 605, 315–324 (2022).

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  4. Baker, C. L. & Pera, M. F. Cell Stem Cell 22, 25–34 (2018).

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  5. Posfai, E. et al. Nature Cell Biol. 23, 49–60 (2021).

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  6. Mitchell, L. E. HGG Adv. 3, 100067 (2022).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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