Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday April 11 2019, @06:36PM   Printer-friendly
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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:39PM (#828383)

    Ewww is right. You should see how they got the DNA into the funnel they inserted into the monkey.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1