BEIJING • Scientists in China have created the first monkeys cloned by the same process that produced Dolly the sheep more than 20 years ago, a breakthrough that could boost medical research on human diseases..
BEIJING • Scientists in China have created the first monkeys cloned by the same process that produced Dolly the sheep more than 20 years ago, a breakthrough that could boost medical research on human diseases.
The two long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) named Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong were born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Shanghai, and are the fruits of years of research into a cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
„The barrier has been broken by this work,“ co-author Muming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience of the CAS Centre for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, said.
Until now, the technique has been used to clone more than 20 different animal species, including dogs, pigs and cats, but primates have proven particularly difficult.
The birth of the now six-and eight-week-old macaque babies also raises ethical questions about how close scientists have come to one day cloning humans.
Humans could be cloned by this technique in principle, said Dr Poo, though this team’s focus was on cloning for medical research.
One day, the approach might be used to create large populations of genetically identical monkeys that could be used for medical research – and avoid taking monkeys from the wild.
