A new medical frontier has been broken with the cloning of primates. Chinese scientific authorities proudly announced that they have successfully cloned macaques for the first time in the world.
This is the first time that true primate clones have been born. The process is detailed in the review Cell, and it was developed over several years by a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. If reproducible, the technique could create large groups of monkeys with definite genetic backgrounds: ideal subjects for studying human diseases and testing new treatments. ” For the cloning of primate species, including humans, the technical barrier has now been broken ”, assumed the author of the Mu-Ming Poo study. ” However, the reason we have chosen to break this barrier is to produce animal models useful for human medicine ”. Before continuing:
” I think Chinese society will accept this. I also hope that Western societies will realize that we have demonstrated the usefulness of cloned monkeys in curing diseases ”.
The Dolly-style macaque
Female long-tailed macaques are now six and eight weeks old. So far, they appear healthy. The clones of these embryos were developed through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the same cloning technique that produced the Dolly sheep in 1996. This process involves removing the nucleus from an egg. unfertilized to replace it with the nucleus of an existing cell, taken from a donor of the same species.
In this method, the ovum, which has become an egg since it has 26 chromosomes, contains the genetic information necessary to create a living organism. It must be chemically activated to be induced to divide within a controlled environment. When the resulting cell embryo is large enough, it is then implanted in the uterus of a surrogate mother to be carried to term. Thus is born the cloned individual.
From experience, it took many failed attempts to have a sheep. Chinese researchers do not give their success rate.
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