参与这一研究的科学家安东·伍兹说，胚胎干细胞能够分化成各种组织和器官，因此这项成果意味着，科学家有可能可以准确跟踪某一基因对动物性状的长期作用，这将有力提高基因研究的准确性。（来源：新华社 黄堃）
Derivation of haploid embryonic stem cells from mouse embryos
Martin Leeb & Anton Wutz
Affiliations
Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QR, UK
Martin Leeb & Anton Wutz
Contributions
M.L. performed the experiments, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. A.W. performed some experiments, wrote the paper and supervised the study.
Competing financial interests
A patent application covering haploid embryonic stem cells has been filed.
Corresponding author
Correspondence to: Anton Wutz
Nature (2011) doi:10.1038/nature10448
Most animals are diploid, but haploid-only and male-haploid (such as honeybee and ant) species have been described1. The diploid genomes of complex organisms limit genetic approaches in biomedical model species such as mice. To overcome this problem, experimental induction of haploidy has been used in fish2, 3. Haploid development in zebrafish has been applied for genetic screening2. Recently, haploid pluripotent cell lines from medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) have also been established3. In contrast, haploidy seems less compatible with development in mammals4, 5. Although haploid cells have been observed in egg cylinder stage parthenogenetic mouse embryos6, most cells in surviving embryos become diploid. Here we describe haploid mouse embryonic stem cells and show their application in forward genetic screening.
