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doi:10.1038/nature05142 LETTERS Human embryonic stem cell lines derived from single blastomeres 1 1 1 1 1 Irina Klimanskaya *, Young Chung *, Sandy Becker , Shi-Jiang Lu Robert Lanza The derivation of human embryonic stem (hES) cells currently tight aggregates with ES cells. Therefore, microdrops containing the requires the destruction of ex utero embryos1–4. A previous study blastomere-derived vesicles/clumps were merged with microdrops in mice indicates that it might be possible to generate embryonic seeded with mitomycin-C-treated mouse embryonic fibroblasts stem (ES) cells using a single-cell biopsy similar to that used in (MEFs) and green fluorescent protein (GFP)-positive hES cells. preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which does not inter- When the outgrowths reached approximately 50–100 cells, they fere with the embryo’s developmental potential5. By growing the were mechanically passaged onto fresh feeders in microdrops con- single blastomere overnight, the resulting cells could be used for taining hES cell medium. Although the initial outgrowths generally both genetic testing and stem cell derivation without affecting the contained cells of different morphologies, over a period of several clinical outcome of the procedure. Here we report a series of ten days we observed a number of fates: (1) cells resembling trophecto- separate experiments demonstrating that hES cells can be derived derm took over the culture, (2) cells that initially re