Hey hey, we’re the monkeys, and Optimum F1000Prime
| 5 February, 2018 | Alanna Orpen |
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These monkey twins have recently been in the limelight, as they are the first successfully cloned primates. So, this month we discuss animal cloning and share our top Prime recommendations on the method used to create them.
This is a photograph of Hua Hua, one of the first monkey clones made by somatic cell nuclear transfer. Image credit: Qiang Sun and Mu-ming Poo / Chinese Academy of Sciences
‘Hey, hey, we’re the Monkeys, And people say we monkey around’ – you might have seen the recent photos and videos of Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, as pictured above, the identical pair of macaques playing around and cuddling soft toys. What’s special about these macaques is that they are the first cloned monkeys, born several weeks ago at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai.
They were cloned using a similar technique to that used to create Dolly the sheep (PDF), the first cloned adult animal 20 years ago. Since then, researchers have cloned 23 mammal species, but the monkey twins are the first primates to be cloned.
The biologists who carried out this work believe this research could revolutionise biomedical research, seeing the technique as a means to develop genetically identical primates to provide improved animal models to study human disorders, and develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Faculty Member and Advisory Board Member, Cheng-Ming Chiang, Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, US, calls this research a technological breakthrough in his F1000Prime recommendation for the article published in Cell. We share the top F1000Prime recommended research on somatic cell nuclear transfer, the method used to create the monkey twins, as well as sharing the current top three articles for the month and our Hidden Jewels. Click on the images for full access to the recommendations.
F1000Prime is a literature recommendation service. The service has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians who select those articles they think are particularly interesting and important, and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.
Top 3 article recommendations on somatic cell nuclear transfer
“The first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, was created using the technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in 1996….In this report, Tachibana et al. have succeeded for the first time in deriving human ES cells by nuclear transfer of human somatic cells to human oocytes.” – John Gurdon and Kei Miyamoto, University of Cambridge, UK.
“This beautiful paper shows that chromosome breakage and mis-segregation, which are responsible for the frequent developmental arrest of reprogrammed somatic nuclei, are most likely a consequence of replication defects.” – Etienne Schwob, National Centre for Scientific Research, France
“This paper demonstrates in a mouse model that embryonic stem cells can be generated from adult mouse body cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer performed on two-cell embryos in the interphase stage of the cell cycle.” – Norbert Gleicher and Vitaly Kushnir, Center for Human Reproduction, US
Current Top 3 recommendations
“This article on how to improve the scientific literature is an excellent and timely read for all researchers.” – Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, University of Michigan, US
“In times dominated by CRISPR/Cas9, it is very exciting to find a method that selectively removes a protein without altering the genome.” – Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Marta Shahbazi, University of Cambridge, UK
“Not only do the authors show a promising method to improve crops and/or study gene functions of specific genes, but they also highlight the complexity of gene regulatory functions.” – Wolfgang Busch, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, US
Hidden Jewels
“This study provides a new concept about the potential mechanism of action of mesenchymal stromal cells and potentially explains some of the observed controversial effects. This study suggest that infusion of apoptotic MSCs generated ex vivo could be all that is needed, instead of infusing live healthy cells.” – Peiman Hematti, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, US
“This article highlights that all macrophages are not the same and even tissue-resident macrophages may have evolving roles over time.” – Maureen Horton, John Hopkins University School of Medicine, US
“This report showed that skin-gut immune interaction is important for the induction of long-term oral tolerance in food-induced anaphylaxis.” – Talal Chatila, Boston Children’s Hospital, US
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