It now seems technically feasible to culture human embryos beyond the “fourteen‐day limit,” which has the potential to increase scientific understanding of human development and perhaps improve infertility treatments. Robust stakeholder engagement preceded adoption of the fourteen‐day limit and should arguably be part of efforts to reassess it, write the authors.
Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Ana S. Iltis, Daniel S. Wagner, Nuria Gallego Marquez, Jason Scott Robert, Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, Marieke Bigg, Sarah Franklin, Soren Holm, Ingrid Metzler, Matteo A. Molè, Jochen Taupitz, Giuseppe Testa, Jeremy SugarmanFebruary 26, 2021
The international Human Microbiome Project trumpeted the coming of age of the field of metagenomics, the study of entire communities of microbes and their contributions to health and disease. In parallel, the field of metabolomics emerged as the systematic, nonbiased analysis of all low-molecular-weight small molecules, or metabolites, produced by a system in response to an environmental stimulus. These fields have enabled discoveries pertinent to a number of human conditions — namely, acute gastroenteritis, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, liver disease, undernutrition and obesity — and have begun to shed new light on multiple aspects of the neglected tropical diseases.
