Jakarta –
It’s been more than a quarter of a century since Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal. Now, for the first time, scientists have succeeded clone rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta), a primate species known to be close to humans.
In China, experts used somatic cells, animal cells other than sperm, and rhesus monkey eggs to create genetically identical copies.
The clone is “healthy” and has survived for more than two years since its birth in Beijing, in stark contrast to previous attempts to clone the species.
This success raises concerns about whether the technique will be used in humans. Experts argue that human cloning cannot be justified because there are still too many ethical and safety considerations.
The rhesus monkey clone was created using a technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) by Qiang Sun and colleagues at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Quoted from Daily emailRhesus macaques are interesting because they are anatomically and physiologically close to humans and have been used extensively in human health research.
“Notably, no rhesus monkey has been cloned via SNT so far,” the experts said in their paper, published in Nature Communications this week.
“We report the successful cloning of a healthy male rhesus monkey and introduce a promising strategy for primate cloning,” they wrote.
The SCNT technique takes somatic cells, such as skin cells, and transfers their DNA into eggs whose nuclei have been removed.
Somatic cells contain genetic information about how an organism is built, but they cannot produce new organisms, which is why this technique involves transferring DNA into eggs.
If the transfer is successful, this process will lead to the complete reprogramming of the genetic material within the cell’s nucleus and allow the egg cell to begin dividing and forming a cloned embryo, equipped with a healthy placenta to grow.
SCNT was also used to clone crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis) in 2017, named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua.
The cloning of two identical female crab-eating macaques was carried out by the same team of Chinese scientists, led by Qiang Sun, who have now cloned rhesus monkeys.
Kloning moneyet rhesus. Photo: Qiang Sun/Nature Communications
However, the cloning efficiency of most mammalian species remains very low, with high death rates while still in the womb or soon after birth.
The researchers said that a previous attempt to clone a rhesus monkey was made by another team in 1997, but was unsuccessful as the creature died 12 hours after birth.
The team was successful because their efforts produced a living animal cloned from 113 initial embryos with a success rate of less than 1%.
According to Dr. Lluís Montoliu, an expert from the Spanish National Biotechnology Center, not involved in the cloning project, the level of difficulty of this experiment was very high.
“The cloning of crab-eating macaques and rhesus monkeys shows two things,” he said.
“Firstly, primate cloning is possible, and secondly, no less importantly, it is very difficult to successfully carry out these experiments, with such low efficiency, once again excluding the possibility of human cloning” , he has declared.
The study authors say this technique should complement the use of both primate species in biomedical research.
Since the birth of Dolly the sheep in 1996, scientists in various countries have experimented with cloning other mammals, including cows and mice in 1998, goats in 1999, pigs in 2000, cats and rabbits in 2002, mice and horses in 2003, and dogs. in 2005.
However, due to genetic similarities with humans, some scientists aspire to clone other primates such as chimpanzees and monkeys. This could eventually lead to the cloning of humans or human body parts, although many experts have raised ethical concerns about this.
Dr. Montoliu said human cloning is not only undisputed. If attempted, this experiment would be problematic and would not be ethically justified.
He said scientists in Europe can no longer conduct these types of experiments because European Union law prohibits it, even though cloning animals for scientific research purposes is legal in the UK.
“European legislation on animal testing prohibits the use of non-human primates unless the experiment is aimed at investigating serious and life-threatening diseases affecting humans or the same primate species, which is not the case these experiments,” Dr. Montoliu said.
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(rn/rn)
2024-01-17 23:00:16
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