MAROKO133 Hot ai: Human skin cells transformed into eggs in embryo study, fueling fertilit

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Human skin cells transformed into eggs in embryo study,

A scientific milestone once thought impossible has been achieved.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have developed a proof of concept that turns skin cells into eggs capable of producing early human embryos.

The advance offers a potential new path for treating infertility through in vitro gametogenesis, the process of creating eggs and sperm outside the body.

The breakthrough could someday help women of advanced maternal age or those unable to produce viable eggs due to cancer treatment or other causes.

“In addition to offering hope for millions of people with infertility due to lack of eggs or sperm, this method would allow for the possibility of same-sex couples to have a child genetically related to both partners,” said co-author Paula Amato, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology at OHSU.

Birth of ‘mitomeiosis’ process

The team cautions that clinical use is still at least a decade away. But their work establishes a novel form of cell division they call “mitomeiosis,” blending aspects of mitosis and meiosis.

“We achieved something that was thought to be impossible,” said senior author Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D., director of the OHSU Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy. “Nature gave us two methods of cell division, and we just developed a third.”

Instead of reprogramming stem cells into gametes, the scientists used somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same basic approach that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997.

They transplanted the nucleus of a skin cell into a donor egg stripped of its own nucleus. The donor egg’s cytoplasm triggered the skin cell nucleus to discard half its chromosomes, mimicking meiosis.

The result was a haploid egg that could then be fertilized with sperm through standard IVF, forming embryos with equal genetic input from both parents.

Promise and limitations ahead

In the study, researchers generated 82 functional oocytes and fertilized them with sperm. While most stalled at the 4- to 8-cell stage with chromosomal abnormalities, about 9 percent developed to the blastocyst stage six days after fertilization.

Nuria Marti-Gutierrez, Ph.D., first author and staff scientist at OHSU, said more work is needed to ensure accurate chromosome pairing and separation. Embryos typically fail if they carry too many or too few chromosomes.

“Aneuploidy is pretty common in human eggs, especially with aging,” Mitalipov added, noting that even natural reproduction results in only about a third of embryos reaching blastocyst stage.

Researchers emphasized that while the advance demonstrates potential, it remains a proof of concept.

“While our study demonstrates the potential of mitomeiosis for in vitro gametogenesis, at this stage it remains just a proof of concept and further research is required to ensure efficacy and safety before future clinical applications,” the authors wrote.

The project followed strict ethical oversight and was supported by Open Philanthropy, the Haploid Gamete Research Foundation, OHSU institutional funds, and other foundations.

The findings of the study have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: New lab-built neuron mirrors real brain cells in energy,

A neuron made in the lab now works almost like one in the body.

A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced the creation of an artificial neuron with electrical functions that closely mirror those of biological ones.

The work builds on their earlier research using protein nanowires synthesized from electricity-generating bacteria.

This discovery could pave the way for ultra-efficient computers modeled on biological principles, systems that might one day plug directly into living cells.

“Our brain processes an enormous amount of data,” says Shuai Fu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at UMass Amherst and lead author of the study.

“But its power usage is very, very low, especially compared to the amount of electricity it takes to run a Large Language Model, like ChatGPT.”

The human brain runs on about 20 watts, whereas a large AI model can demand over a megawatt of electricity to achieve a similar task. This vast gap in efficiency is what researchers hope to close with their new design.

Neurons at body’s voltage

The brain is made up of billions of neurons, specialized cells that fire and transmit impulses with extreme efficiency. Replicating that process electronically has proven difficult.

“Previous versions of artificial neurons used 10 times more voltage—and 100 times more power—than the one we have created,” says Jun Yao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author.

That made them inefficient and unable to directly interface with living neurons.

The team’s advance changes this. “Ours register only 0.1 volts, which about the same as the neurons in our bodies,” says Yao.

With this low-voltage design, the artificial neurons could integrate not only into computing systems but also into medical devices capable of communicating seamlessly with biological cells.

From biofilms to computers

The researchers see a broad range of potential uses, from bio-inspired computers to electronics that link directly with the human body.

“We currently have all kinds of wearable electronic sensing systems,” says Yao.

“But they are comparatively clunky and inefficient. Every time they sense a signal from our body, they have to electrically amplify it so that a computer can analyze it. That intermediate step of amplification increases both power consumption and the circuit’s complexity, but sensors built with our low-voltage neurons could do without any amplification at all.”

The breakthrough relies on protein nanowires derived from Geobacter sulfurreducens, a bacterium that naturally produces electricity.

Yao and colleagues have used these nanowires to build unusual technologies in recent years — a sweat-powered biofilm that runs small electronics, an “electronic nose” that detects disease, and even a device that harvests electricity from thin air.

The new artificial neuron adds to that list, pushing their research further into the intersection of biology and computing.

This work was supported by the Army Research Office, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The findings of the study have been published in Nature Communications.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com