In a paper published online yesterday, scientists in China reported that they had successfully cloned macaques—a species of monkey commonly used in biomedical research. This announcement of the birth of the first cloned primates is another in a long line of “firsts” in the history of cloning, starting with John
In a paper published online yesterday, scientists in China reported that they had successfully cloned macaques—a species of monkey commonly used in biomedical research. This announcement of the birth of the first cloned primates is another in a long line of “firsts” in the history of cloning, starting with John Gurdon’s creation of cloned frogs in 1962 and proceeding through the little remarked-on cloning of mice from embryonic stem cells in 1990 to the cloning of the celebrated Dolly the sheep in 1996 —the first mammal to be cloned from cells taken from an adult.
What makes this latest announcement important is that no cloned primate has ever been born before; previously, scientists had only created cloned primate (and indeed human) embryos. Such cloned embryos were created so that they could be destroyed to produce stem cells, or to show that it was possible to do so.
The cloned monkeys whose birth was announced this week are more closely related to humans than any of the other cloned animals born in the past, and they could be a promising tool for medical research, especially on neurological diseases. Cloning would allow scientists to produce genetically identical, customizable lab animals that can be engineered to have just the traits that scientists want to study.
