Better half

A group of U.S. and Israeli researchers has developed a method to turn unfertilized human eggs into dividing embryonic stem cells (ESCs) containing only half the normal number of chromosomes. The haploid cells could both simplify and speed up screens against genetic mutants that are routinely performed in diploid cells.

"It's easier to study the function of a gene variant when there isn't another version of the gene in the cell to obscure the effect of that variant," said Dieter Egli, an assistant professor of stem cell biology at Columbia University and a senior research fellow at the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF). ...