The world's first model of biological rhythm disorder somatic cell cloning monkeys was born.

According to China Voice News, often staying up late and living irregularly are problems that plague many people in modern society.
many studies have shown that rhythmic disorders or sleep disorders can easily cause early symptoms of mental illness, such as bipolar disorder and depression, but there are few effective drugs for treating such diseases, and the lack of animal models similar to humans is a key factor in the success rate of drug development.
early 2018, the Chinese Academy of Sciences took the lead in breaking through the world of human primate cell cloning, cloning monkeys "middle and middle" and "Huahua" was born.
after a year of efforts, recently, Chinese scientists successfully created the world's first biological rhythm disorder cell cloning monkey model, indicating that China has officially started a new era of mass production, standardized creation of disease cloned monkey model.
What kind of good news will this bring to humanity? In drug research and development, it is an international common practice to experiment with mice.
mice have made outstanding contributions to human health, but they are very limited.
such as biological clock disorders, depression and other mental illness, brain diseases, it is difficult to reflect in the night-time animal mice.
experiments with non-human primate models similar to humans, the success rate of drug development would theoretically be higher.
, the director of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the brain structure and function of macaques, a variety of cognitive functions, physiological functions are very similar to people.
but creating this model of macaques is a problem for the international team working on the study.
a year ago, Chinese scientists successfully developed the first somatic cell nuclear transplantclonated cloned monkey" in china and "Huahua", opening the era of non-human primate cloning.
, however, "Middle China" and "Huahua" are healthy monkeys, in terms of application value, not as big as genetically modified cloned monkeys. Liu Zhen, a researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
, said: "We set up somatic cell cloning technology in order to better build the monkey model of disease, the former 'middle' 'Huahua' is only a clone monkey with normal somatic cells, so in the end with the gene edited somatic cells can successfully get this cloned monkey model?" It has not been confirmed before.
, 'China and The Chinese' was obtained from the body cells of the early-abortion fetal monkey.
so, after birth, adult cells, can also be used to carry out the construction of cloned monkeys? Nor has it been confirmed.
"There is a pacemaker in the brains of mammals that controls biological rhythms," which regulates circadian rhythms through a series of rhythmic genes, one of which is BMAL1. After more than two years of effort, the
team used the CRISPR/Cas9 method for the first time to knock out the core gene BMAL1 of the biological rhythm, resulting in a group of missing Macaques with BMAL1.
do these monkeys show symptoms of rhythmic disorders? To do this, by six months after the monkey weaned, the researchers began to observe the biological rhythm of the gene knockout monkeys in several ways.
the researchers gave the monkeys exercise bracelets to monitor their day and night activity at any time. Zhang Hongxuan, a researcher at the
Institute of Neuroscience, said they found that the gene knockout monkeys had a significant increase in nighttime activity and may have developed insomnia symptoms.
at a very young age, the monkeys showed very prominent symptoms.
, for example, in terms of circadian rhythms, BMAL1 knockout leads to abnormal circadian rhythms, increased activity at night, and reduced overall sleep time by 25%.
in addition, there are many studies that show that rhythmic disorders or sleep disorders can easily cause early symptoms such as bipolar disorder, depression, and so on.
Zhang Hongxuan said that from this study can be seen, monkeys show fear of people, avoid with people to see and other issues.
he said: "Wild monkeys are curious about people when conservationists come in, so they will look at people.
however, the gene knocks out monkeys, as long as someone opens the door or someone enters, there will be a situation of holding the head, very worried, which is obvious lying down to depression and anxiety phenotype.
" on this basis, the researchers collected the body cells of a macaque with bMAL1, the most obvious symptom of sleep disorders, and obtained five genetically knocked-out clone monkeys through cloning technology.
the image of the academician Pu Muming as "hair-pulling monkeys": "These monkeys' somatic cells are from a monkey, after genetic editing, to get the symptoms of the biological clock disorder, each cell inside the gene is the same, so you can make a batch (clone monkey).
we make the best metaphor, is Sun Wukong body after pulling hair, out a group of small Sun Wukong, scientific myths the same truth.
", "This group of cloned monkey models showing rhythmic disorders will be used for the treatment of major diseases such as sleep disorders, depression and drug research and development, which will help shorten the drug research and development cycle, improve the efficiency of new drug research and development, and speed up the process of new drug creation and research and development in China."
said it also represents an important step in brain cognitive function research, early diagnosis and intervention of major diseases.
"One of the other areas of research in basic research is to do brain mapping, which is to parse the entire network of the brain, " he said.
doing this map we will also use this cloned monkey in the coming, because it has the same genetic background, get this data can be integrated analysis.
so the brain map mapping also because there is a cloned monkey technology can be greatly advanced.
" and "China" and "Huahua" the birth of the era of non-human primate cloning, and the emergence of this group of cloned monkeys means that China's leadership in non-human primate model preparation technology, will promote China's overall scientific research strength, but also neuroscience research to the forefront of the world's historical opportunities. "As far as I know, the MIT team is already doing cloning, and the Japanese team is doing cloning, but it's not easy, although our technology is all public, but really to reach our current level, there is still a distance, I originally estimated it is a year distance, " said Mr. Pu.

now it seems that the gap has widened, because we are now one step further.
" Source: CCTV.