Chinese Scientists Successfully Clone Rhesus Monkey Using Improved Cloning Method

Chinese Biologists Successfully Clone a Rhesus Monkey

Chinese biologists succeeded in cloning a rhesus monkey using the method of transferring the nucleus of a somatic cell into the cytoplasm of an egg, which British scientists used to clone “Dolly the sheep” in 1996.

Scientific Breakthrough

The journal Nature Communications notes that, according to the scientists, “the somatic cell nuclear transfer method had already been used successfully to clone a long-tailed macaque. But rhesus monkeys were not cloned in the same way. So we devised an approach that greatly increased the probability of successful cloning, allowing us to produce a healthy male,” a clone of this animal.

It is noteworthy that in 2018, a team of biologists headed by Professor Sun Qiang, Director of the Primate Study Center in Beijing, managed to clone two long-tailed macaques. But they were not successful despite numerous attempts to clone the rhesus macaque in the same way.

But now thanks to improvements in the cloning method, by replacing some of the cells in the cloned embryos with their counterparts from embryos obtained using artificial insemination, they have successfully cloned a rhesus macaque.

Implications for Medical and Biological Research

It turned out that this step, as it turned out later, greatly increased the probability of the embryos surviving, and thanks to it, scientists were able to obtain 11 supposedly viable embryos, 7 of which were implanted in the wombs of the surrogate mothers. But only two of the cloned embryos took root, and only one of them was born.

According to the researchers, this male rhesus macaque has been living for more than two years, is in good health, and has no obvious or hidden congenital defects in the functioning of his body. This gives hope that subsequent improvements in cloning techniques will allow scientists to begin cloning large numbers of primates for medical and biological research that currently use ordinary monkeys.

Source: TASS

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