Initiating meiosis in a dish

Embryonic germ cells are formed from embryonic progenitors through a highly complex differentiation process, recapitulation of which in vitro has proved challenging. Two new studies in The EMBO Journal report culture conditions for embryonic stem cell‐derived primordial germ cell‐like cells ( PGCLC s) that enable global DNA demethylation (Ohta et al , [Ohta H, 2017]), and subsequent initiation of meiosis (Miyauchi et al , [Miyauchi H, 2017]), allowing future manipulations to elucidate mechanisms driving germ line differentiation.