- cross-posted to:
- science@lemmy.institute
- cross-posted to:
- science@lemmy.institute
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Ed… Ward…
not that chimera!
An a.i. clarification of the article’s summary: Researchers proved that stem cells from mammals can turn into any cell type like cells from an early embryo. These are called naive stem cells. They’ve shown naive stem cells work great in rodents, but not as well in primates since the donor cells don’t match the host embryo. So they tried different conditions to produce naive stem cells from monkeys and got better at growing chimeric embryos. A chimeric monkey is one that has cells from two different embryos combined together. They created an aborted fetus and live chimeric monkey with high donor cell numbers. Testing showed the donor cells integrated into many tissues (including sex organs and placenta) of the chimeric monkeys, up to 90%. This is a big deal for researching naive stem cells and genetically modifying primates.
I wouldn’t be able to tell you how accurate this synopsis is, but I am curious what reasons we have to be genetically modifying primates…
It’s not hard to imagine. Maybe remove or correct some undesirable genes, for example those associated with diseases. Or perhaps reduce genes associated with violence or aggression. There are a lot of reasons.
To learn and understand how biology works.
Imagine no longer needing organ donors because we can grow anyone with these cells or regeneratin a finger or nose after a freak accident. Before we get there we need to fully understand and test first.
And yeah u guess human modifying is something people will eventually do as well i guess.
Planet of the Apes, here we come!
“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Dr. Ian Malcolm
