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    Home > Biochemistry News > Biotechnology News > Brain science expert Feng Guoping studies autism in Shank3 defective monkeys.

    Brain science expert Feng Guoping studies autism in Shank3 defective monkeys.

    • Last Update: 2020-08-09
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    "U.S. scientists worry that the U.S. lags behind China in primate research. "I have two big concerns," said Michael Platt, a brain scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies primates at the
    university of Pennsylvania.
    the United States has not invested heavily in these animal models, we will not have the opportunities that Chinese scientists enjoy.
    second, we may lose the talent base and expertise of primate neuroscience.
    " Sarah Zhang, media personality for the Atlantic Monthly, interviewed Brain Science expert Feng Guoping and his co-authors who are studying Shank3's defective monkeys in an attempt to advance research into the world's challenge of autism.
    1977, in Feng Guoping's high school, he was the only one who was admitted.
    he entered medical school.
    like most of his contemporaries with scientific ambitions, he soon set his sights on graduate studies in the United States. "China was really 30 to 50 years behind and couldn't do cutting-edge research, " he says.

    " So in 1989, he left China for Buffalo, New York, where he first saw piles of snow.
    he is studying for a Ph.D. in genetics at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
    Feng Guoping is not tall, thin, with monk-like calm, a flash of smile.
    currently teaches neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he specializes in the genetics of brain diseases.
    his lab has 45 members and is affiliated with the McGovern Institute of Brain Science.
    the institute, founded in 2000, has $350 million in endowments, the largest donation ever received by the university.
    in short, his lab is not short of money.
    now, Feng Guoping goes to China several times a year to do research he has not done in the United States.
    , Sarah Zhang interviewed him in Shenzhen in January.
    took a red-eye flight from Boston to the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he worked with several researchers.
    the institute's headquarters stands a large metal sculpture of a computer motherboard, next to a DNA double helix structure that is seen as a 20th-century technical representation and a 21st-century technology representative.
    Feng Guoping, who organized a seminar at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, also invited several colleagues as speakers, including a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was interested intrees.
    Treeis a small mammal associated with primates native to southern China.
    Feng Guoping also invited several neuroscientists from the University of Pittsburgh and the State University of New York's Upper State Medical University to study addiction, all of whom were born in China and, like Feng Guoping, went abroad in the 1980s and 1990s in search of opportunities.
    now they, like Feng Guoping, are returning to China in the hope of conducting a cutting-edge study.
    such research is too expensive, too impractical, and perhaps too ethically sensitive in the United States.
    at the seminar, the scientists spoke of the potential of using CRISPR, a powerful gene-editing technique, in primate brains.
    the next day, Sarah set out with Yang Zhou, a postdoctoral student at Feng Guoping's lab, to visit the breeding base.
    the breeding base itself did not genetically modify the monkeys, but Feng Guoping realized that a certain number of monkeys make it an ideal testing ground for new genetic engineering techniques.
    a Chinese researcher has been working on stem cell research at the base, it is not difficult for Feng Guoping and his colleagues to do so here.
    Cooperation with the base has been driven by new gene editing techniques, particularly CRISPR, which has sparked a boom in biological research.
    CRISPR uses proteins as molecular scissors, allowing scientists to track and disable gene-oriented targets.
    before CRISPR, the genetic engineering of primates was a tricky process, with very limited editing.
    few research teams try, fewer successful teams.
    and using CRISPR technology, monkey genetic engineering is almost as easy as a mouse."
    Feng Guoping has made some achievements in mouse research, and as a talented young geneticist, he has invented genetic techniques that promote brain research in rodents.
    when Yang entered Feng's Massachusetts Institute of Technology lab in 2011, Feng gave him a task of studying autism using mutant mice bred in the lab.
    the mice's Shank3 gene was "destroyed" or disabled.
    1 to 2 percent of human skeitatic autism spectrum disorder cases, including some of the most serious cases, have shank3 gene mutations.
    these patients have repetitive sexual behavior and social disorders, or may be severeintellectual lying.
    mice whose Shank3 gene was destroyed showed similar characteristics to those in humans with the Shank3 gene mutation.
    some neurons are underdeveloped, repeatedly combing themselves and sometimes even grinding their skin.
    Are these findings applicable to humans? Rodents do not have a complete prefrontal cortex, a brain region that is thought to be home to personality, decision-making, and higher cognitive functions.
    and they don't socialize like humans do.
    for example, avoiding eye contact is a typical feature of human autism, but even healthy mice can't look at each other.
    autism researchers are increasingly questioning whether mice are fit to be studied.
    looking for a more appropriate model of autism research, Feng began looking for collaborators in China in the hope of breeding monkeys that destroyed the Shank3 gene.
    his goal is not to breed autistic monkeys, but to explain the brain structure that causes the condition by showing enough symptoms, and to test drugs that can alleviate the condition.
    if his Shank3 research project is successful, Feng also wants to study mental illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia in monkeys.
    he told me that one of his close friends suffered from schizophrenia and committed suicide in college, a tragedy he could never forget. How could
    brain make such a terrible mistake? The question prompted him to spend more than three decades studying brain disease, and he thought monkeys might eventually help them uncover some answers.
    at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Feng Guoping's lab conducted genetic engineering experiments on macaques.
    this monkey is very small and looks rather strange.
    they are relatively new experimental animals due to their small size and their low feeding costs, but they are relatively new and have difficulty training in laboratory tasks.
    Feng Guoping also wants to study the Shank 3 gene in Chinese macaques.
    for decades, scientists have studied the social behavior of macaques, making them suitable for research on diseases such as autism, which often affect human social function.
    macaques are more closely related to humans than macaques, and their brains are better represented by the human brain.
    even with advanced tools such as CRISPR, genetic engineering of macaques will not be easy.
    researchers first asked female monkeys to take the hormones used in human in vitro fertilization.
    then collect the eggs, fertilize them, and use a slender glass needle to inject crispR proteininto the embryo.
    monkey embryos are far more sensitive than mouse embryos, and small changes in the PH of the injectable substance or CRISPR protein concentration can affect monkey embryos.
    but only a few embryos produce the expected mutation.
    the embryos are implanted into the surrogate mother, only some of them will survive.
    need dozens of eggs to successfully grow a monkey, so even a few Shank3 defective monkeys need the support of a large breeding base.
    the first Shank 3 defective macaque was born in 2015, and they have since bred four more, bringing the total to five.
    to study the macaques, Feng now has to fly across 12 time zones.
    he initially requested to be bred at the New England Primate Research Center for the shank 3 defective macaque.
    center in Southsboro, Massachusetts, just 20 miles west of the MIT campus, is conveniently located.
    but in 2013, Harvard Medical School, one of the funders, decided to close the center.
    's decision has rocked the research community, widely seen as a sign of a decline in U.S. interest in primate research.
    some national primate centers, such as the United States, are important research sites for diseases such as AIDS, Zika and Ebola, and have also received close public attention. Michael Halassa, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at
    , spoke at Feng's seminar.
    in Shenzhen, he told Sarah, "They screwed up." just two years later, CRISPR has sparked a new wave of interest in primate research, said Wei-Dong Yao, another spokesman for
    .
    Yao Weidong was one of the researchers there before the New England Primate Research Center closed.
    now he has set up a laboratory at the State University of New York's Upper State Medical University to study genetically engineered mice and human stem cells.
    U.S. scientists worry that the U.S. lags behind China in primate research. "I have two big concerns," said Michael Platt, a brain scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies primates at the
    university of Pennsylvania.
    the United States has not invested heavily in these animal models, we will not have the opportunities that Chinese scientists enjoy.
    second, we may lose the talent base and expertise of primate neuroscience.
    " at the same time, China is establishing itself as an international hub for primate research.
    China not only has a large number of monkeys, but also a large number of monkey breeding experts, who can carry out subtle experiments to modify the genome of monkeys.
    China is trying to make great efforts in science and raise its reputation.
    over the past few years, in Kunming, Shanghai and Guangzhou, monkeys bred by scientists have been genetically modified to exhibit symptoms such as Parkinson's disease, Du's muscular dystrophy and autism.
    in China, it wasn't Feng Guoping's team that bred the Shank 3 defectmonkeys.
    another team, consisting mainly of researchers at Emory University and Chinese scientists, had the same result. while
    in China, Sarah also met Mu-Ming Poo, who left the University of California, Berkeley, to become director of the Shanghai Institute of Neuroscience.
    a few days later, the institute's scientists will announce to the world that they have successfully cloned the monkey Zhongzhong Huahua.
    Pu Muming was thrilled with the breakthrough.
    , he says, using cloning, researchers can more quickly produce a group of genetically engineered identical monkeys, rather than one monkey at a time.
    one of the main challenges of studying disease models through monkeys is to produce a large number of monkeys.
    Pu Muming envisions attracting primate researchers from around the world through a research hub in Shanghai.
    's recent investment in science has attracted Chinese graduate students and postdoctoral students from the West, who have also brought back Western standards.
    collaboration with U.S. researchers, such as Feng Guoping and De Simon, at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, has also introduced Western standards to Chinese research institutions, even higher than Western standards.
    macaque's sensitivity to faces is one of the reasons Feng Wants to study primates.
    when an ordinary monkey sees an aggressive picture of a monkey face, it stares back.
    it pays less attention to neutral faces and completely ignores polite faces.
    if Shank3's defective monkeys can't get these social cues, just as some autistic people can't recognize other people's facial expressions, that suggests primates are indeed the right model for autism.
    , Feng's collaborators in Shenzhen are also using MRI and electroencephalography to study the brains of monkeys, hoping to figure out how genetic mutations alter brain structures.
    .
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