A team of Chinese scientists has announced that they have carried out genetic experiments on a group of monkeys in order to obtain primates from "human" intelligence.
The announcement came from researchers at the Kunming Institute of Zoology .
Genes that control brain development in humans have been transferred to the DNA of recently born transgenic monkeys.
According to what is reported in the pages of Mit Technology Review the primates, subjected to continuous tests, are proving to be decidedly more intelligent than their own kind.
The geneticist Bing Su , of the Kunming Institute of Zoology "This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition with a transgenic monkey model".
Currently only China has obtained transgenic monkeys, using the Crispr technique that copies and pastes DNA.
To create the transgenic monkeys, Chinese researchers exposed 11 rhesus macaque embryos to a viral vector, a modified virus capable of carrying copies of the human microcephalin gene into cells. The surviving embryos were implanted and eventually five genetically modified specimens survived, expressing two to nine copies of the human gene.
To evaluate the effects, the researchers measured the amount of white matter in the animals' brains through magnetic resonance images, which were then subjected to cognitive tests.
Although the size of the brain was not significantly different from that of the control monkeys, according to the Chinese scientists, the transgenic monkeys had slower brain development (a characteristic typical of humans, when compared to the timing of other primates) and better results. in short-term memory tests for colors and images.