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 (PGCLCs) that enable global DNA demethylation (Ohta et al , 2017), and subsequent initiation of meiosis (Miyauchi et al , 2017), allowing future manipulations to elucidate mechanisms driving germ line differentiation.