Zhongzhong and Huahua - China has cultivated the world's first individual cell cloning monkey.

"West Travel" in the Sun Wukong law force is boundless, only need to pull a hair gently blow, you can immediately become a thousand pieces.
, similar scenarios are now expected to be in reality.
Researcher Sun Qiang of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced in Beijing on the afternoon of the 24th that the team, after five years of unremitting efforts, broke through the world problem of somatic cell cloning monkeys, and successfully bred the world's first individual cell cloning monkey.
marks the first time China will usher in an era of monkeys as an experimental animal model.
's findings were published online January 25 in the journal Cell, a leading academic journal of biology.
primate (macaque) somatic cell cloning, has been the world's first problem On November 27, 2017, the world's first individual cell cloning monkey "middle" in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience, brain science and intelligent technology excellence innovation center of the non-human primate platform was born;
both cloned monkeys are female.
so far, the two small monkeys have been very normal in their physical indicators and are in good development.
somatic cells are a concept relative to reproductive cells.
it is a class of cells whose genetic information is not passed on to the next generation like reproductive cells.
" somatic cells perform special functions, such as red blood cells performing transport functions, immune cells perform immune defense functions, they do not have developmental properties.
but some somatic cells can be cultured in vitro for infinite proliferation, and countless somatic cells can be obtained.
," Sun said.
use this feature, somatic cell cloning technology came into being.
somatic cell cloning technology can also be called somatic cell nuclear transplantation technology. first of
, it is necessary to separate and culture animal cells, and then use the method of nuclear transplantation, the oocyte denuclearization as a nuclear receptor, to the somatic cell or containing a small amount of cytoplasm nucleosome as a nuclear donor, the latter will be transferred into the former, to build a recombinant embryo, the donor nucleus in the nucleatory of the denuclearized oocyte reprogramming, and start the embryo development process, pregnancy.
since the success of the "Dolly sheep" somatic cell cloning in 1997, many mammals have also succeeded in somatic cell cloning, but the somatic cell cloning of non-human primates (macaques) similar to humans has been an unresolved problem.
, so, where is the difficulty of non-human primate nuclear transplantation? "The main difficulty is in three ways.
take macaques as an example: First, the monkey cell nucleus is not easy to identify, the nuclear difficulty of denuclearation, and second, the monkey's oocytes are easy to activate in advance.
operation slightly careless, oocytes may be activated, and then it will first start autonomous egg cracking, somatic cells can not keep up, and finally lead to the egg can not develop;
," Sun said.
cloned monkeys help build animal models that mimic human diseases, although somatic cell cloning of non-human primates (macaques) is difficult to achieve, but it is very important to humans.
"Without cloning monkeys, it is difficult to build animal models that simulate human diseases, and many diseases cannot be studied smoothly and effectively."
" Sun Qiang said, "For example, the vast majority of brain diseases are not effective treatment, one of the main reasons is that the development of generic mouse models and humans, the development of drugs in the human body when most of the ineffective or have side effects."
"There were two disadvantages in the past using ordinary monkeys as experimental animal models.
" is the monkey's low reproductive capacity, transmission time is long.
a monkey's pregnancy cycle is 160 days, and it takes at least four to six years to get pregnant from the birth of a small monkey to the time it is sexually mature. the second
is the complex genetic background.
because the monkey's father and mother are not the same, their genetic origin is not the same, the genetic background is not the same, so that the individual differenceis, the interference with the experiment will be greater.
," Sun said.
based on this, scientists around the world have been trying to solve this problem.
2012, at a small symposium on non-human primate research held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, the director of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligent Technology, Said ingenuity, proposed that nerves should be carried out in monkey cell cloning, and that this is the only feasible way to solve the above problems.
so, running to this mission goal, Sun Qiang led a post-doctoral Liu Zhen-based team to open the research.
Sun Qiang's team analyzed that the key nodes of somatic cell cloning are mainly divided into four stages: embryo construction, activation, nuclear gene activation, and post-bed development.
, the first three stages, that is, the process of embryonic cells dividing from one cell to 2, 4, 8 cells in turn, is the most critical.
"Before the nuclear genome is started, the somatic nucleus goes through a process of reverting to an early embryonic nuclear state, that is, reprogramming.
if this process can be controlled, it should be able to increase the rate of development of somatic cell embryos.
," Sun said.
monkey's oocytes are difficult to denuclearize and require high technology.
in order to be able to do in the process of denuclearization to achieve rapid and accurate, reduce damage to oocytes, Liu Zhen hard practice technology for several years, and eventually can achieve an average of 10 seconds to take out a nuclear.
for the development of new drugs for brain diseases, mechanism research, intervention and diagnosis and treatment to bring a bright future on the significance of the successful construction of somatic cell cloning monkeys, Pu Muming said, first confirmed that macaques can be cloned with somatic cells, and second, macaques can become really useful animal models.
" the same genetic background of cloned monkeys, it reduces the interference of individual differences on the experiment, greatly reduces the number of experimental animals used.
at the same time, through somatic cell cloning technology, model monkey preparation time is reduced to one year, complex and accurate gene editing can be carried out in vitro cultured cells.
," Pu mumin said.
, the success of somatic cell cloning monkeys will promote China's first development of a new pharmaceutical research and development industry chain based on animal models of non-human primate diseases, and promote the development of new drugs for Alzheimer's disease, autism and other brain diseases, as well as immunodeficiency, tumor, metabolic diseases.
" at the same time, this breakthrough also took the lead in achieving the goal of 'leading, cornerover overtaking, three-oriented', further consolidating the leading position of Chinese scientists in the international scientific plan of primate all-brain mesotro neural connection map, which will be launched in China soon.
," Pu mumin said. "The authors from the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported on the birth and growth of cloned macaques from somatic cell nuclear transplantation and chemical reprogramming," said John Lasco, a medical scientist and president of the International Cell Therapy Association at
.
similar technique spent 20 years preparing Dolly sheep, but this time scientists from Shanghai used clever chemical methods and operational techniques to overcome the obstacles that led to the failure of cloning monkeys over the years.
this is a major technological breakthrough that many experts have long considered impossible.
" somatic cell cloning monkey application is also very broad. Established in 1929, Jackson Labs in the United States
is the world's largest model animal research and development base and marketing company, cultivating and selling more than 7,000 gene-edited mouse strains for the international biomedical community.
" and other technology mature, in the future, China can also build a non-human primate as a model of the main research and development base and industrial chain.
" Pu Muming said: "In the face of the country's major needs, the production of brain disease model monkeys will also bring unprecedented bright prospects for the study of the mechanism of brain disease, intervention, diagnosis and treatment."
the implementation of the primate all-brain mapping plan led by Chinese scientists and the cutting-edge research of primate brain science will further make our country the world's pooling of brain science talents.
"Source: People's Network.