Scientists have recovered RNA from the desiccated skin of a Tasmanian tiger. RNA sequencing gives real data on what happened in living cells before extinction, which would be required to de-extinct the species. @genomeresearch

Time-lapse microscopy allows scientists to track cells, but produces so much data that it is nearly impossible to sort through manually. UC Prof. Ali Shariati describes a deep-learning model (DeepSea) which purports to tackle this. @CellRepMethods

The structures don’t have a beating heart or early brain, but include cells that would go on to form the placenta, yolk sac and embryo itself. Prof. Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz described the work yesterday at a stem cell society meeting @ISSCR.

This work does raise serious ethical and legal issues, as the lab-grown entities are outside existing legislation in the UK and most other countries. There is no near-term prospect of the synthetic embryos being used clinically.

Scientists have claimed to use stem cells to create synthetic human embryos in an advance that avoids the need for eggs or sperm. These model embryos, resembling those in early stages of human development, could help our understanding of genetic disorders.

In a world first, a team of doctors at Guy’s and St Thomas’ have successfully operated on a patient’s mouth using a robot. The Versisus robot has in the past been used to treat urology patients, but it was put to use to remove tumours growing in the mouth.