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from the typing-out-that-encyclopedia-just-got-quicker dept.
As described in a report in Bejing's National Science Review journal, and covered by China Daily and MIT Technology Review, scientists have created five transgenic monkeys with extra copies of a human gene believed to play a role in human's intelligence.
“This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model,” says Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort.
The modified rhesus macaque monkey's brains took longer to develop (similar to human children's brains) and they also score higher on memory tests although MRIs indicate their brains did not increase in size.
According to geneticist Su:
the small number of animals was a limitation. He says he has a solution, though. He is making more of the monkeys and is also testing new brain evolution genes. One that he has his eye on is SRGAP2C, a DNA variant that arose about two million years ago, just when Australopithecus was ceding the African savannah to early humans. That gene has been dubbed the “humanity switch” and the “missing genetic link” for its likely role in the emergence of human intelligence.
There are ethical and slippery slope issues to consider and the paper was apparently not able to find a publisher in the west.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday April 11 2019, @07:15PM
I tend to agree.
But other scenarios seemed highly overblown.
Pollution would never cause a problem. We don't really need unleaded gasoline do we? Large scale nuclear ("nook-u-lar") war would never happen. Or if it did, it wouldn't be a big deal. Global warming . . . the president says not to worry about it. Hydraulic Fracking coincidentally leading to earthquakes? What could go wrong with a nuclear reactor built along the ocean with only an 18 foot tsunami wall to protect from 50 foot tsumanis?
Just sayin'
I'm not a conspiracy nut. But bad things can happen. Drug resistant antibiotics. GMO crops self spreading into other fields.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.