Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues.
“It’s a significant step forward,” says Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, who led the research published in the journal Nature Communications.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/30/nx-s1-5553322/ivg-human-eggs-cells-fertility
Mitalipov’s team instead used the technique that was used to clone Dolly the sheep: The scientists removed most of the DNA from a healthy donor egg and replaced it with most of the DNA from another woman’s skin cell.
Next, the researchers essentially tricked the reconstituted egg to skip normal forms of cell division known as mitosis and meiosis. Instead, they coaxed the eggs to go through a different process they dubbed “mitomeiosis.” That produced 82 functional eggs, the researchers reported.