News Animals

The first embryos from a mammal have now been grown in space

The research is a step toward understanding how human embryos might fare

A microscope image of seven mouse blastocysts on a lavender background.

Two-cell mouse embryos cultured on the International Space Station and returned to Earth formed blastocysts (some shown).

S. Wakayama et al/iScience 2023

By Saima S. Iqbal

Mouse embryos can make it to an early stage of development in space.

In an experiment conducted in 2021, a few hundred frozen two-cell embryos from mice thawed and grew over four days on the International Space Station. Of the several dozen embryos that made it back to Earth, nearly a quarter formed healthy clusters of cells known as blastocysts.