Scientist Creates... Monkey-Human Hybrid

It was a chimera embryo, meaning it is mostly made out of one DNA set but has some organs and tissues with another DNA code.

In this case, their aim (they say) was to make a monkey that had fully-human organs growing inside of it, I suppose to prove that we can make replacement human organs in animals similar to us (like monkeys).

Their objective is to create "human-animal chimeras," in this case monkey embryos to which human cells are added.

Why, why? The idea behind the research is to fashion animals that possess organs, like a kidney or liver, made up entirely of human cells. Such animals could be used as sources of organs for transplantation.

Making chimeras: The technique for making chimeras involves injecting human embryonic stem cells into a days-old embryo of another species. The hope is that the human cells will grow along with the embryo, adding to it.

Izpisua Belmonte tried making human-animal chimeras previously by adding human cells to pig embryos, but the human cells didn't take hold effectively.

Because monkeys are genetically closer to humans, it's possible that the new experiments could now succeed. To give the human cells a better chance of taking hold, scientists also use gene-editing technology to disable the formation of certain types of cells in the animal embryos.

The embryos were destroyed after being grown for a time.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:33 PM

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