Topics: Animals, Science, World News, China, Technology, Health
**Content warning: Contains discussion and an image of animal testing some may find upsetting.**
Scientists have revealed the first live birth of a monkey which has two sets of DNA.
Two sets of DNA were taken from monkeys of the same species, however, the two monkeys had their own certain genetic distinctions.
The stem cells and the genetically distinct embryos were then combined and one of them resulted in a 'substantially chimeric' monkey being born.
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The team of scientists from China - who reported their work in scientific journal Cell - used monkey embryos which were seven days old to retrieve nine stem cell lines.
They then took some of the cells and put them into embryos from the same monkey species, which were four-to-five days old.
In order to be able to tell which cells were from the first set of embryos and which were from the second, scientists put green fluorescent protein in one set.
Twelve monkeys ended up getting pregnant after scientists implanted the embryos in them and six live births took place. However, only one monkey was classed as 'substantially chimeric' - because out of 26 different types of its tissue tested, the percentage of stem cells in the monkey's tissue ranged from 21 percent to 92 percent - averaging at 67 percent.
The monkey was euthanized after 10 days as a result of suffering from hypothermia and respiratory failure.
Chimera mice have previously been successfully created, but monkeys are evolutionary closer to humans making this development even more exciting for scientists.
Principal investigator at Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher with BGI-Research Hangzhou, Miguel Esteban, who co-authored the study, said, as per CNN: "It is encouraging that our live birth monkey chimera had a big contribution (of stem cells) to the brain, suggesting that indeed this approach should be valuable for modeling neurodegenerative diseases."
However, the monkey chimeras could also help for other species and their 'conservation'.
Esteban continues: "If they could be achieved between two types of nonhuman primate species, one of which is endangered.
"If there is contribution of the donor cells from the endangered species to the germ line, one could envisage that through breeding animals of these species could be produced."
The Chinese Acadmey of Sciences' Zhen Liu, a senior author on the study, said, as per The Independent: "This is a long-sought goal in the field.
"This work could help us to generate more precise monkey models for studying neurological diseases as well as for other biomedicine studies."
And scientific director of the Institute of Neuroscience at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Mu-Ming Poo resolved: "The health of the monkey is still a problem.
"If we want to produce a monkey model, we have to have a better chimera that can live longer."
