Scientists in China have just grown a fluorescent green monkey using stem cells in a world first.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who published their findings in the journal Cell, have recorded the first live birth of a chimeric monkey that contains cells that come from two genetically distinct embryos of the same species. Chimeric refers to any tissue that contains two, or more, differing sets of DNA.
Although this has been observed in other animals, such as rats and mice before, so far it has not been possible in any other species.
Cynomolgus monkeys—also known as crab-eating or long-tailed macaques—were used in the research. Scientists performed a number of different tests on nine stem cell lines, which used cells removed from 7-day-old embryos. They were then laced with a fluorescence green protein to ensure that the researchers could see exactly which tissues had grown from these stem cells.
"We have demonstrated that in-vitro cultured naive monkey embryonic stem cells (ESCs) can highly contribute to tissues in monkey offspring," Miguel A. Esteban, a researcher at Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, which is affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), told Newsweek.
"In the future, we will focus on improving the efficiency of chimera generation, enhancing the naive pluripotent state of the monkey ESCs to more closely mimic early embryonic cells, and the application of this research in monkey disease model generation."
"Pluripotent" refers to something that is capable of developing into differentiated cells.
The scientists injected the stem cells into monkey embryos which were four or five days old. This resulted in 12 pregnancies among female macaques, and six live births. They found that one live monkey, and one fetus was chimeric. The fetus however, miscarried.
The green fluorescent protein told scientists which of their tissues contained cells that were the result of the injected lines.
"This is a long-sought goal in the field," senior author of the study Zhen Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a release detailing the findings. "This research not only has implications for understanding naive pluripotency in other primates, including humans, but it also has relevant practical implications for genetic engineering and species conservation. Specifically, this work could help us to generate more precise monkey models for studying neurological diseases as well as for other biomedicine studies."
Following this successful research, the scientists plan to look further into how embryos survive during pregnancy. This will subsequently help improve the "efficiency of chimera generation," the study said.
"This work helps us to better understand naive pluripotency in primate cells," co-corresponding author Qiang Sun of CAS said in a release detailing the findings. "In the future, we will try to increase the efficiency of this method for generating chimeric monkeys by optimizing the culture conditions for the stem cells, the cultures for the blastocysts where the stem cells are inserted, or both."
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