Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Humster

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A humster is a hybrid cell line made from hamster oocyte fertilized with human sperm. It always consists of single cells, and cannot form a multi-cellular being.

Humsters are routinely created for mainly two reasons:

  • To avoid legal issues with working with pure human embryonic stem cell lines.
  • To assess the viability of human sperm for in vitro fertilization.
  • Somatic cell hybrids between hamster or mouse and man have been used for mapping of various traits at least since the 1970s.

    References

    Humster Wikipedia