西班牙科学家利用皮肤细胞成功培育出人类精子

Scientists in Spain on last Wednesday they had created human sperm from skin cells, a medical feat which could eventually lead to a treatment for infertility.

上周三，来自西班牙的一队科学家宣布，他们成功地用皮肤细胞培育出了人类精子，并且这项医学成就最终能够用于治疗不育症。

The researchers said they were working to find a solution for the roughly 15 percent of couples worldwide who are unable to have children and whose only option is to use donated sperm or eggs.

研究人员表示，世界上大概有15%的夫妇无法生育，只能依靠捐赠精子或卵子来生育，而他们也一直为解决这些夫妇的问题而做出努力。

"What to do when someone who wants to have a child lacks gametes (eggs or sperm)?" asked Carlos Simon, the scientific director of the Valencian Infertility Institute. "This is the problem we want to address: to be able to create gametes in people who do not have them."

西班牙瓦伦西亚不孕不育中心的科学主管卡洛斯·西蒙发问道：“当无法产生配子（精子或卵子）的人们想生育后代时，他们该怎么办呢？这是我们想要解决的难题——我们希望能够帮助人们制造配子。”

The result of their research, which was carried out with Stanford University in the United States, was published last Tuesday in Scientific Reports, the online journal of Nature.

他们和美国斯坦福大学就该研究进行了合作，而研究成果在上周二于《自然》的在线杂志《科学报告》出版。

Simon and his team managed to reprogramme mature skin cells by introducing a cocktail of genes needed to create gametes. Within a month the skin cell was transformed to become a germ cell, which can develop into sperm or an egg, but it did not have the ability to fertilise, they found.

通过加入一系列制造配子所需的基因，西蒙和他的同事们成功地对皮肤细胞进行了重新编码。他们发现，在不到一个月的时间后，皮肤细胞转换成了一个生殖细胞。该生殖细胞能够分化成精子或卵子。但是它无法受精。

"This is a sperm but it needs a further maturation phase to become a gamete. This is just the beginning," Simon said. "With the human species we must do much more testing because we are talking about the birth of child."

西蒙说：“这个精子需要更多的成熟期来最终成为配子。这仅仅是个开始。鉴于我们在探讨一个孩子的诞生，我们应该做大量的测试工作。”

The researchers also must take into account legal constraints since the technique involves the creation of artificial embryos which right now is only allowed in some countries.

研究人员们还需要考虑法律上的限制，因为这种技术涉及到创造人工胚胎，而人工胚胎只在一些国家得到了许可。