Katherine Unger Baillie for Penn Today: “In the journal eLife, they report on their step-by-step process of rewiring cells. The findings—the first in the marmoset, a small monkey—open new possibilities for studying primate biology and developing novel assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro gametogenesis, a process of generating germ cells, sperm or eggs, in a laboratory dish, akin to how in vitro fertilization involves the generation of an embryo outside the human body.
“‘Scientists know how to generate functional sperm and egg from induced pluripotent stem cells in mice, but mouse germ cells are very different from human germ cells,’ says Kotaro Sasaki, an assistant professor at Penn Vet. ‘By studying marmosets, whose biology more closely resembles ours, we can bridge the gap.'”