Science

Scientists attach barcodes to mouse embryos – human ones coming soon

Scientists attach barcodes to mouse embryos – human ones coming soon
Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes
Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes
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Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes
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Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes
Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes
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Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes

Fans of the film Blade Runner may remember a scene in which the maker of an artificial snake is identified by a microscopic serial number on one of its scales. Well, in a rare case of present-day technology actually surpassing that predicted in a movie, we’ve now gone one better – bar codes on embryos. Scientists from Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), along with colleagues from the Spanish National Research Council, have successfully developed an identification system in which mouse embryos and oocytes (egg cells) are physically tagged with microscopic silicon bar code labels. They expect to try it out on human embryos and oocytes soon.

The purpose of the system is to streamline in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer procedures. If egg cells and embryos can be quickly and easily identified, then things should run much smoother, and success rates should be higher.

The labels, which had been declared biologically innocuous in an earlier study, are microinjected into the perivitelline space of mouse embryos – the perivitelline space is a region between the cell membrane and the zona pellucida, which is a cover that surrounds the embryo’s plasma membrane. The embryo exits the zona pellucida before entering the uterus, so the bar code would be shed at that point.

Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes
Spanish scientists have attached silicon barcode labels to embryos and oocytes

In the UAB lab studies, labeled embryos were shown to develop normally up until the blastocyst stage, which precedes implantation. The researchers also studied how well the labels stayed on throughout the development cycle, how easily they could be read with a standard microscope, how they could be eliminated after the shedding of the zona pellucida, and how well they could stand up to the freezing and thawing of their host embryo.

There were some problems with embryos being able to free themselves from the labels when they shed the zona pellucida. The scientists are therefore now looking at modifying the surface of the labels, so they could be mounted on the outside of the covering, instead of being injected into the perivitelline space. They are also working on an automated bar code reading system.

Permission has been given by the Government of Catalonia’s Department of Health for UAB to begin testing its system with human oocytes and embryos from several fertility clinics in Spain.

The research was recently published in the journal Human Reproduction.

3 comments
3 comments
Pantheon
I\'m impressed! Not a single ¨Mark of the beast\'- or paranoid comment yet!
kinbo1966
It\'s the Mark Of The Beast!!! There you go Pantheon... ha! It is most likely NOT the MOTB, however; the technology certainly exists to fulfill what the Bible says about having a mark to buy or sell. Interesting time to be alive don\'t you think?
Shi-Hsia Hwa
@kinbo1966: They\'re called credit cards, I bet you have one already =P
The point of this technology is this: There have been several cases where mix-ups happened and the wrong embryos were implanted into the wrong would-be moms, and people naturally got very upset. This is not trivial, it causes a lot of emotional distress and legal problems. The barcodes could be checked before the embryos were put into the ladies and then when the blastocysts hatch from the zona pellucida, the barcode would just go away and presumably end up in the lady\'s pantyliner eventually. and be thrown out. It\'s NOT the case that the baby will be born with a label stuck on, if you think so you must not have read the article properly.
Here\'s the link to the abstract of the original paper by the way http://goo.gl/ofuF0