Oregon Scientist Clones Using Embryos Instead of Eggs

While it is April Fool's Day, this is for real. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the Orgeon scientist that last year used somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) better known as therapeutic cloning to clone human embryos AND created human embryos with three-genetic parents, has new research published in Nature that has not gotten a lot of attention, but we should be aware of it none-the-less.

Mitalipov and his team have cloned mice. So what you say? Researchers have been cloning mice for years. This is different because instead of using eggs to clone those mice like in traditional SCNT, Oregon scientists used 2-celled mouse embryos. Contained in the egg are factors that can reprogram the nucleus of an adult cell and create a new organism with the same genetic make-up; what we know as cloning. It was thought that after an egg is fertilized and the resulting embryo divides, the embryo no longer had that same reprogramming abilities as the egg. Mitalipov has shown that at the 2-celled stage of the embryo those factors are still present.

From the Oregon Health and Science University website:

An Oregon Health & Science University scientist has been able to make embryonic stem cells from adult mouse body cells using the cytoplasm of two-cell embryos that were in the "interphase" stage of the cell cycle. Scientists had previously thought the interphase stage — a later stage of the cell cycle — was incapable of converting transplanted adult cell nuclei into embryonic stem cells.

The findings by OHSU's Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D., and his team could have major implications for the science of generating patient-matched human embryonic stem cells for regenerative medicine....

Mitalipov's findings will be published March 26 in the online edition of Nature. If the new findings in mice hold true for humans, it could significantly help efforts to make rejection-proof human embryonic stem cells for regenerative therapies. That's because embryonic cells that Mitalipov's team used for reprogramming — cells in the "interphase" stage — are more accessible than the traditional egg cells that are in short supply. Scientists previously had believed embryonic stem cells were capable of being produced only using the metaphase stage of egg cytoplasm.

Embryos will be far cheaper as a raw material for research than eggs – but also far more controversial ethically.

Second, although media reports and the university press release skirted around this issue, two embryos are destroyed in the process: the “surplus” embryo from the IVF clinic, and the cloned embryo created by the researchers, which is dissected for its stem cells.

Third, although media reports tiptoed around the “c-word”, Milatipov’s process is basically an elaborate form of cloning.