An Israeli team of scientists has managed to grow a model of an early human embryo without needing a sperm, an egg, or a womb.
Embryo models are meant to provide an ethical way of studying the beginnings of human life.
The model was accurate enough that it even released hormones which turned a pregnancy test positive, the BBC reports.
It's hoped the achievement can help build understanding of what happens in the first few weeks after an egg's fertilised, a crucial period in early human development. This time is a significant source of miscarriage and birth defects.
The Weizmann Institute of Science's Jacob Hanna told the BBC it hadn't been done before: "This is really a textbook image of a human day-14 embryo.
"I give great credit to the cells - you have to bring the right mix and have the right environment and it just takes off.
"That's an amazing phenomenon."
He's referring to the 120 naive stem cells that the team "reprogrammed" into epiblast, trophoblast, hypoblast and extraembryonic mesoderm cells, which are all found in early human embryos.
They were combined using a precise ratio. About 1% of the mixture assembled itself into a model resembling a human embryo.
The research team said it would be impossible to actually achieve pregnancy in a human using the model.
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