Embryonic development in mammals begins with
the division of the fertilized egg, which is then followed by several further rounds of division to form the blastocyst, a sphere of cells made up of two layers of cells surrounding a fluid - filled cavity.
Not exact matches
But understanding the precisely orchestrated choreography that unfolds within each
egg during cell
division will eventually allow us to correct the errors, to ensure the production
of healthy
eggs that can be
fertilized.
«Ladies, this is why fertility declines with age: Age - related female infertility explained by a defect in the choreography
of chromosome sharing during cell
division in
eggs before they are
fertilized.»
The film depicts several sperm attempting to
fertilize the
egg, «zooms in» on one sperm's tail to show how the dynein proteins move in sync to cause the tail to bend and flex, and ends with the sperm's successful journey into the
egg and the initiation
of cell
division that will ultimately create a new organism.
«Maybe at the one - cell or two - cell stage,» Eggan and his colleagues reasoned, «there's still some
of that stuff in there...» And if they picked the right moment
of cell
division, when these powerful reprogramming factors were still floating around in the periphery
of the cell, they might be able to use drugs to temporarily freeze the cell in the middle
of division, stick in the needle
of a micromanipulator to suck out the embryonic DNA, squirt in DNA from an adult animal, and then kick - start the process
of reprogramming — hours, perhaps even days after an
egg had been
fertilized.
Although the researchers had first removed the DNA
of both the
egg and the
fertilizing sperm, the
egg was still primed for cell
division and development, increasing the chances
of success, the team says.
Newly
fertilized eggs before gene editing (left) and embryos after gene editing and a few rounds
of cell
division (right).
All embryos start from a
fertilized egg, which, after completing its
division process, leads to the formation
of a blastocyst.