Bourn Hall’s pivotal role in groundbreaking embryo research
Embryos used in ground breaking research at the Francis Crick Institute were donated by patients who had undergone fertility treatment at Bourn Hall. The majority had completed their families through IVF treatment and wanted to help other infertile people by donating their remaining embryos to help understand the fundamental processes of embryo development through this research study.
Researchers have used genome editing technology to reveal the role of a key gene important for human embryos in the first few days of development. This is the first time that genome editing has been used to study gene function in human embryos, which could help scientists to better understand the biology of our early development.
Gene important for human embryos
After the egg is fertilised, it divides until at about 7 days it forms a ball of around 200 cells called the ‘blastocyst’. The study found that human embryos need the gene OCT4 to correctly form a blastocyst.
“We were surprised to see just how crucial this gene is for human embryo development, but we need to continue our work to confirm its role,” says Dr Norah Fogarty from the Francis Crick Institute, first author of the study.
Dr Kathy Niakan from the Francis Crick Institute, who led the research, adds: “One way to find out what a gene does in the developing embryo is to see what happens when it isn’t working.”
The team used genome editing techniques to stop a key gene from producing a protein called OCT4, which normally becomes active in the first few days of human embryo development.
Dr Niakan continues: “Now we have demonstrated an efficient way of stopping the gene working, we hope that other scientists will use it to find out the roles of other genes. If we knew the key genes that embryos need to develop successfully, we could improve IVF treatments and understand some causes of pregnancy failure. It may take many years to achieve such an understanding, our study is just the first step.”
Role in IVF
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