Scientists are one step closer to treating male infertility now that they've successfully grown a pair of artificial “man bits” in a dish. Though these “frankenbeans” aren’t fully functional yet, they’ll allow experts to further investigate it by producing artificial sperm, thanks to a mini 3D model of testes that can be used to study the real deal.
So, how will this work? Artificial sperm cells would presumably have copies of a man's DNA, because they would be grown from his own stem cells. Nitzan Gonen, a researcher at Bar Ilan University in Israel, says she and her team also have plans to grow “fully artificial testis” from stem cells.