A healthy monkey was successfully cloned by a team of Chinese researchers and survived for more than 2 years. A company report is published in the journal «Nature Communications». The cloned specimen was a male rhesus macaque and the results were obtained after providing the photocopy embryo with a healthy placenta. Qiang Sun, Zhen Liu, and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing performed a comparative analysis between epigenetic datasets of blastocyst-stage monkey embryos derived from in vitro fertilization ( Ivf) and those cloned by somatic cell nuclear transfer.
They identified anomalies in the way genetic information can be accessed and read from the developing cloned embryo and its placenta, and anomalies in the size and shape of the placentas of cloned monkeys that were developing in surrogate mothers.
To address these issues, the authors developed a method to provide the developing clone embryo with a healthy placenta. Using this approach, scientists managed to obtain a healthy male rhesus monkey that survived for more than two years, the protagonist of the study whose first author is Zhaodi Liao, from the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology.
The illustrated findings advance understanding of the mechanisms of primate reproductive cloning and could help improve its efficiency, the authors suggest. The body's somatic cells, such as skin cells, contain the genetic information about how an organism is built, but they cannot give rise to new organisms. Somatic cell nuclear transfer technology has already successfully led to the cloning of various mammal species, including the famous Dolly sheep, progenitor of cloned mammals, and cynomolgus monkeys. However, experts reason, the cloning efficiency of most mammalian species remains extremely low, with high fetal and neonatal mortality rates.
For the rhesus monkey, one study reported a successful somatic cell clone, but the monkey did not survive after birth. Now the Chinese team's feat takes a step forward. Although only one healthy rhesus monkey clone based on this method has been reported so far, the results could prove to be a promising strategy for primate cloning in the future, the experts conclude.
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