For the first time, Chinese scientists have successfully created a rhesus monkey clone that lived to adulthood, according to a study published in Nature Communications.
Retro, the first successful rhesus monkey clone was more than two years old at the time of the study’s publication.
“We have achieved the first live and healthy cloned rhesus monkey, which is a big step forward that has turned impossible to possible, although the efficiency is very low compared to normal fertilized embryos.” Falong Lu, a Chinese Academy of Sciences State Key Laboratory of Molecular Developmental Biology researcher, claimed, CNN reported. “Currently, we haven’t had the second live birth yet.” (RELATED: Bon Appétit: Australian Company Unveils Giant Cloned Woolly Mammoth Meatball)
Scientists first discovered “artificial embryo twinning” in sea urchins in 1885, according to the University of Utah’s timeline of cloning. Since then, there have been many successes and failures, including the famous case of Dolly the Sheep, the university’s timeline detailed.
The first-ever successful mammal clone took place in Scotland in 1996 and the participating scientists named her “Dolly the Sheep” after the famous singer Dolly Parton, according to the University of Edinburgh. Dolly’s cloners used a technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the University of Utah’s timeline said. This is a process where a somatic cell is placed into an enucleated unfertilized egg, according to Science Direct.
But what’s so different about Retro?
In his case, scientists exchanged the placenta of a cloned embryo for one from embryos resulting from in-vitro fertilization, Nature Magazine reported. This method reportedly not only lessened the number of needed embryos and surrogate mothers, but considerably lowered the amount of developmental defects that frequently lessen the chances of cloned embryos reaching adulthood.
“We can produce a large number of genetically uniform monkeys that can be used for drug efficacy tests,” Mu-Ling Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, stated, according to Nature Magazine.
China has not been shy about producing clones in large volumes. China has been factory cloning pigs in massive numbers, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported. The growing company BGI is reportedly Earth’s largest site for cloning pigs and farms out around 500 clones each year.
“First, it is possible to clone primates. And second, no less important, it is extremely difficult to succeed with these experiments, with such low efficiencies,” Dr. Lluis Montoliu of Spain’s National Center for Biotechnology wrote in a statement, according to CNN
He reportedly went on to say the research reveals that “not only was human cloning unnecessary and debatable, but if attempted, it would be extraordinarily difficult and ethically unjustifiable.”