This article is from the WSSF 2014 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

Japanese scientists at Kyoto University have taken mouse skin cells and turned them into baby mice. The procedure involved using skin cells from female fetal mice and reprogramming them into an early stage version of an egg. These were then mixed with mouse ovarian cells and implanted into mice. Four weeks later they collected immature eggs, matured and fertilized them in the lab, and placed them into surrogate mice. The result was three baby mice which grew into fertile adults.

There is a possibility of applying this to human research in the future but there are technical and ethical issues.

Original article: Offspring from Oocytes Derived from in Vitro Primordial Germ Cell–like Cells in Mice Science, 16 November 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6109 pp. 971–975 www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6109/971

AP article www.masslive.com/talk/index.ssf/2012/10/procedure_that_turns_skin_cell.html.