All of the studies on the human
embryo development has been possible
because of the human revolution that was
initiated in 1969 by the first in vitro
fertilization of the human egg that happen
here at the University of Cambridge in
fact in the building we are right now
having our lab, by Bob Edwards
group and this study showed that we can
fertilize human egg and that we can
then culture it for the first six day of
development so-called pre-implantation
development which is extremely useful
for many reasons. The next stage of
development so-called black box of
development was not possible to get into
because that's the time when embryo
implants within the body of the mother
and therefore we lose the touch of it
we lose the sight of it, we can't observe
it directly and we were not able to mimic
the stage of development in vitro. So we
can culture pre-plantation mouse or
human eggs which is for human six-day of
development for mouse fourth day of
development. They are cultured in
strictly chemically simple defined medium  but there was no platform or medium
that embryos would survive in beyond that
stage of development. So what we have
done now
that the development that we establish
here in in our lab was to establish the
platform and the environment, medium in
which we can culture those Human eggs for
the extra six, seven days. We know right
now film development of embryos to
have a dynamic picture how different
types of cells segregate and establish
their fate.
Why it is important to understand this
particular stage of development so first
of all because it was never understood
before we did not have a very good idea
how it happens in fact, to a certain extent
we didn't have at all idea how it
happens and when I teach my students and
the course I often teach and then with my
colleagues who teach them about fruit
flies of frogs and this is unbelievable
how much more we know about this other
model systems and students are often
shocked how very little we know about
ourselves and our own first steps in
life. So that's one reason just curiosity,
but and it's not just curiosity because
this is also the stage of development
that many pregnancies fail so to
understand how embryos progress in his
development through this period will
help us with time to define ways to help
embryo develop properly. It is like
looking at the new planet discovering
new planet you don't want to only
discover it, you wish to
understand the life on it and really we
are right now at that stage so we open
it up we know it exists and now we only
know the beginning of what is
happening on that planet and that's
really going into it deeper and deeper
and deeper that's what excites me most.
