Scientists may be able to transcend the limitations of nature even farther in the long future. Production of’synthetic embryos’ will be one of the main topics of Professor Saha’s next panel.
The ‘broad potential’ of these reprogrammed ‘clusters’ of cells allows them to develop into any tissue in the body.
These cell clusters have been able to grow into something that resembles normal embryos in terms of growth in the lab.
In certain artificial human embryos, ‘features of biological humanness’ like beating hearts have already started to appear.
According to Professor Saha,’some biologists and engineers’ believe that these embryos can be developed into fully functional animals.
That brings up the terrifying prospect of producing artificial humans or animals with carefully modified genomes.
“Transplanting that embryo into a womb and seeing if the baby or fetus develops normally is the definitive experiment that a developmental biologist would like to see,” explains Professor Saha.
However, many in the field, in my opinion, consider such experiment to be reckless.
