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Comment by Metacelsus | Hacker News Reader

Hi, this is my research and I'd be happy to answer any questions about it (I know I'm a bit late though).

What do you suspect will be the practical uses of this? Could it help researchers run experiments to develop better fertility protocols? Or depending on costs, fertility clinics could test various protocols to find the optimal "hormone environment" for promoting high quality egg development? Or is this going to a more "out there" direction as in you could grow an egg entirely in vitro for later fertilization and implantation?

1 and 2: Yes that's what we're doing (in partnership with Gameto, the startup commercializing this tech). See our recent preprints: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.27.534477v2 and https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.27.534479v2

3: I'm definitely excited about in vitro oogenesis and that's the direction I want to take this in the future. Right now, we're not able to reliably get the germ cells to do meiosis, so that's what I'm working on.

How long until we're looking at a home appliance that can grow a baby to maturation from a genetic sample?

What are the biggest bottlenecks?

How do you anticipate such a device will be regulated?

What do you anticipate will be the response from the pro-life right?

From the antiscience antivax type community?

That's a completely different technology, artificial wombs are much harder than artificial ovaries. Very unlikely within 20 years, I won't speculate past that point.

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