西班牙科学家利用皮肤细胞成功培育出人类精子
Scientists in Spain on last Wednesday they had created human sperm from skin cells, a medical feat which could eventually lead to a treatment for infertility.
上周三,来自西班牙的一队科学家宣布,他们成功地用皮肤细胞培育出了人类精子,并且这项医学成就最终能够用于治疗不育症。The researchers said they were working to find a solution for the roughly 15 percent of couples worldwide who are unable to have children and whose only option is to use donated sperm or eggs.
研究人员表示,世界上大概有15%的夫妇无法生育,只能依靠捐赠精子或卵子来生育,而他们也一直为解决这些夫妇的问题而做出努力。"What to do when someone who wants to have a child lacks gametes (eggs or sperm)?" asked Carlos Simon, the scientific director of the Valencian Infertility Institute. "This is the problem we want to address: to be able to create gametes in people who do not have them."
西班牙瓦伦西亚不孕不育中心的科学主管卡洛斯·西蒙发问道:“当无法产生配子(精子或卵子)的人们想生育后代时,他们该怎么办呢?这是我们想要解决的难题——我们希望能够帮助人们制造配子。”
The result of their research, which was carried out with Stanford University in the United States, was published last Tuesday in Scientific Reports, the online journal of Nature.
他们和美国斯坦福大学就该研究进行了合作,而研究成果在上周二于《自然》的在线杂志《科学报告》出版。Simon and his team managed to reprogramme mature skin cells by introducing a cocktail of genes needed to create gametes. Within a month the skin cell was transformed to become a germ cell, which can develop into sperm or an egg, but it did not have the ability to fertilise, they found.
通过加入一系列制造配子所需的基因,西蒙和他的同事们成功地对皮肤细胞进行了重新编码。他们发现,在不到一个月的时间后,皮肤细胞转换成了一个生殖细胞。该生殖细胞能够分化成精子或卵子。但是它无法受精。"This is a sperm but it needs a further maturation phase to become a gamete. This is just the beginning," Simon said. "With the human species we must do much more testing because we are talking about the birth of child."
西蒙说:“这个精子需要更多的成熟期来最终成为配子。这仅仅是个开始。鉴于我们在探讨一个孩子的诞生,我们应该做大量的测试工作。”The researchers also must take into account legal constraints since the technique involves the creation of artificial embryos which right now is only allowed in some countries.
研究人员们还需要考虑法律上的限制,因为这种技术涉及到创造人工胚胎,而人工胚胎只在一些国家得到了许可。