Egg Cells from Skin Cells?

     In this article, scientists are working to create a human egg from an adult cell. They used a technique that combines cloning with fertilization, along with a small amount of chemical coaxing. Researchers had succeeded in producing egg cells of many other types of animals, so the hunt to produce egg and sperm of humans has been on.

    An attempt was made when the nucleus from a human egg cell was taken out and replaced with the nucleus of a skin cell, which is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In this case, the researchers weren't trying to clone a human, but wanted to make an egg cell, which is half of the DNA of a skin cell. When done on mice, once the cloned egg was fertilized, it removed half of its chromosomes in order to take in the chromosomes of the sperm. In human eggs, this did not happen, so the researchers added roscovitine to persuade the egg to allow the chromosomes to be removed. This led to no viable eggs, since many would kick out the wrong half of chromosomes or end up with an incorrect number of chromosomes. It is theorized that it's due to the chromosomes pairing up randomly instead of with their specific other half, like in normal meiosis.

    This is still being tested in Japan, and hopefully, these trials are getting us a step closer to creating viable eggs. I think this is such an interesting idea that can help many people who would like biological children, but have reasons they wouldn't be able to. The fact that similar tests have been proven possible in other animals makes me optimistic about the probability of this becoming an option in the future.