Chinese scientists create super monkeys by injecting brains with human DNA

Harriet Brewis
www.msn.com
Originally published April 13, 2019

Chinese scientists have created super-intelligent monkeys by injecting them with human DNA.

Researchers transferred a gene linked to brain development, called MCPH1, into rhesus monkey embryos.

Once they were born, the monkeys were found to have better memories, reaction times and processing abilities than their untouched peers.

"This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model," said Bing Su, a geneticist at Kunming Institute of Zoology in China.

The research was conducted by Dr Su’s team at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of North Carolina in the US.

“Our findings demonstrated that nonhuman primates (excluding ape species) have the potential to provide important – and potentially unique – insights into basic questions of what actually makes human unique,” the authors wrote in the study.

The info is here.