Can conception, the most intimate of human experiences, be automated?
Teruo Fujii of the University of Tokyo in Japan and his colleagues are building a microfluidic chip to nurture the first stages of pregnancy. They hope, eventually, to create a fully automated artificial uterus in which egg and sperm are fed in at one end and an early embryo comes out the other, ready for implanting in a real mother. They say using such a device could improve the success rate of IVF.
“While there have been many advances in the production of in vitro embryos, these embryos are still sub-optimal [compared] to their in vivo…
