Science

Researchers overseas hail China's first monkey clones

January 27, 2018 13:59·
Chinese Scientists Successfully Clone Monkeys in Shanghai

Chinese Scientists Successfully Clone Monkeys in Shanghai

Instead, since humans and primates are more closely related, testing on monkeys might be as effective as testing on humans.

The two monkeys, named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, are about 2 months old, and could be used in medical research.

Ethical concern is one thing that could prevent scientists from cloning humans in the near future.

Since Dolly's birth in 1996, scientists have cloned almost two dozen kinds of mammals, including dogs, cats, pigs, cows and polo ponies, and have also created human embryos with this method.

Besides the research leading to human clones, observers have pointed to other ethical issues surrounding the cloned monkeys, such as the health issues that have been associated with cloned animals in the past.

"The barrier of cloning primate species is now overcome", declared Muming Poo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.

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While scientists in the field acknowledge that we are nearing a time when we will be able to make human babies using cloning, it is not legal in the United States, and it is opposed around the globe. "For drug and other laboratory tests, scientists have to purchase monkeys from all over the world, which is costly, bad for the environment and produces inaccurate results because each monkey might have different genes". Dolly caused a sensation because she was the first mammal cloned from an adult.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer consists of removing the nucleus from an egg and replacing it with a differentiated cell, such as a skin cell, from the donor being cloned. The egg then uses the genetic blueprint from the implanted cell to grow an identical life form inside a surrogate monkey mother. Scientists there on Thursday said they successfully cloned the two with a method similar to that used to create Dolly, the sheep cloned in Scotland in 1996.

"A primate model that can be generated with a known and uniform genetic background would undoubtedly be very useful in the study, understanding and ultimately treatment, of human diseases, especially those with a genetic element", he told Agence France-Presse.

When this process was used on Dolly the sheep, it took 277 eggs and 29 viable embryos (which only one survived into adulthood) for her to be born, and it wasn't a perfected copy as the donor's cell mitochondria that includes their own DNA, are left behind. "So to achieve that in primates has been quite a technical advance", he said. "I rather think that the result attained is only an affirmation of self".

Scientists at the Shanghai institute said they followed worldwide guidelines for animal research set by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, but called for a debate on what should or should not be acceptable practice in primate cloning.

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll on Thursday showed that about a third of U.S. residents (32 percent) say they found cloning animals morally acceptable.

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