A renowned fertility clinic has carried out a scientific study which claims musical vibrations increase the success of IVF. Songs from the late soul legend such as ‘Can’t get enough of you baby’ have become the most streamed music through the iPods fitted in the incubators where embryos are developing.
Tag: embryos
Mitochondrial DNA Levels as A Marker Of Embryo Viability In IVF
A new approach to embryo assessment described at this year’s Annual Meeting of ESHRE may be able to shed light on why so many apparently healthy embryos are not viable. The approach is based on the quantification of mitochondrial DNA found in the outermost layer of cells in a five-day old embryo. The combination of chromosome analysis and mitochondrial assessment may now represent the most accurate and predictive measure of embryo viability with great potential for improving IVF outcome.
Bioethics in China: No Wild East
The first and only published papers to describe genome modification in human embryos have come from Chinese laboratories. For some, this is another signal of China’s successful transformation from a closed society focused on farming and the manufacturing of commodities to a world leader in innovation. For others, these studies are the latest in a list of feats reported over the past decade that reflect the country’s lax regulation or cultural indifference to fundamental ethical tensions.
Inside the ‘Black Box’ of Human Development
More recently, the IVF revolution has enabled early human embryos to be studied in unprecedented detail outside the body, but still gastrulation has remained a mystery. Technical limitations have meant that no one has been able to keep them alive much beyond nine days, about halfway to the key developmental stage when the simple ball of embryonic cells begins to take on the identity of a proper body plan, with a top and a bottom, and the first signs of the distinctive triple layer of tissues that form the disc‑shaped “gastrula”.
Missouri State Appeals Court to Decide Fate of Divorced Couple’s Frozen Embryos
The Missouri State Court of Appeals will decide whether a divorced woman has the right to implant two embryos she and her ex-husband had frozen nine years ago.
The Netherlands OKs Growing Human Embryos for Research
Amid the furor raised by reports that American scientists are raising chimeras, or half-human, half-animal embryos, another country gave approval on Friday for researchers to grow human embryos. The reason why the Dutch government allowed scientists to grow human embryos is that the country’s limited supply of leftover embryos from in vitro patients is fast depleting. However, the government said the human embryos could only be used for study in a limited number of fields, reports Reuters.
Genome Editor CRISPR Helps Trace Growth of Embryos—and Maybe Cancer Next
Alexander Schier simply wanted to make sure he destroyed a gene in zebrafish embryos. So like many biologists these days, he turned to the genome-editing system known as CRISPR. But Schier, a developmental biologist at Harvard University, ended up doing much more than knocking out a gene. He and colleagues devised a new way to mark and trace cells in a developing animal. In its first test, described online today in Science, the researchers used CRISPR-induced mutations to reveal a surprise: Many tissues and organs in adult zebrafish form from just a few embryonic cells.
A Critical Inheritance From Dad Ensures Healthy Embryos
An important feature for life is what embryos receive from mom and dad upon fertilization. Oddly enough, centrioles, the structures responsible for cell division and flagella movement, are given by the paternal gamete. How oocytes, the maternal gametes, lose centrioles and the importance of doing so for female fertility has been an enigma since the 1930s. A team led by Mónica Bettencourt-Dias at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal) have cracked this mystery, shedding light upon a critical mechanism whose deregulation leads to infertility, and that is important for the working of other cell types.
Embryo Protein May Warn Before Miscarriage and Pre-eclampsia
Scientists have uncovered how embryos stick to the uterus in the first week of life. The discovery might one day help improve treatments for recurrent miscarriages and pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening elevation of maternal blood pressure.
Human-embryo Editing Now Covered by Stem-cell Guidelines
The international society that represents stem-cell scientists has updated its research guidelines in the wake of dramatic progress in several fields — in particular in research that involves the manipulation of human embryos. The authors hope that the updated guidelines will allay various ethical concerns, and avoid the need for strict government regulations that could impede the progress of science.