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China Science

Chinese Scientists Have Put Human Brain Genes In Monkeys -- And Yes, They May Be Smarter (technologyreview.com) 142

Posted by BeauHD from the understanding-the-evolution-of-human-cognition dept.
Scientists in southern China report that they've created several transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence. "According to their findings, the modified monkeys did better on a memory test involving colors and block pictures, and their brains also took longer to develop -- as those of human children do," reports MIT Technology Review. "There wasn't a difference in brain size." From the report: The experiments, described on March 27 in a Beijing journal, National Science Review, and first reported by Chinese media, remain far from pinpointing the secrets of the human mind or leading to an uprising of brainy primates. Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort, specializes in searching for signs of "Darwinian selection" -- that is, genes that have been spreading because they're successful. His quest has spanned such topics as Himalayan yaks' adaptation to high altitude and the evolution of human skin color in response to cold winters. [Instead of the FOXP2 gene famous for its potential link to human speech] Su was fascinated by a different gene: MCPH1, or microcephalin. Not only did the gene's sequence differ between humans and apes, but babies with damage to microcephalin are born with tiny heads, providing a link to brain size. With his students, Su once used calipers and head spanners to the measure the heads of 867 Chinese men and women to see if the results could be explained by differences in the gene.

By 2010, though, Su saw a chance to carry out a potentially more definitive experiment -- adding the human microcephalin gene to a monkey. China by then had begun pairing its sizable breeding facilities for monkeys (the country exports more than 30,000 a year) with the newest genetic tools, an effort that has turned it into a mecca for foreign scientists who need monkeys to experiment on. To create the animals, Su and collaborators at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research exposed monkey embryos to a virus carrying the human version of microcephalin. They generated 11 monkeys, five of which survived to take part in a battery of brain measurements. Those monkeys each have between two and nine copies of the human gene in their bodies. After putting the monkeys inside MRI machines to measure their white matter, they gave them computerized memory tests. "According to their report, the transgenic monkeys didn't have larger brains, but they did better on a short-term memory quiz, a finding the team considers remarkable," reports MIT Technology Review.
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Chinese Scientists Have Put Human Brain Genes In Monkeys -- And Yes, They May Be Smarter More

Chinese Scientists Have Put Human Brain Genes In Monkeys -- And Yes, They May Be Smarter

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  • New protected class (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @09:47PM (#58418754)

    Soon there will monkey quotas at colleges and businesses...

  • Jesus Fucking Christ (Score:5, Funny)

    by olsmeister ( 1488789 ) on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @09:48PM (#58418762)
    did Planet of the Apes teach us nothing?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      did Planet of the Apes teach us nothing?

      It's probably censored in China. They won't learn from sci-fi, and may even be working on a HAL 9000.

      (Actually, they like "lucky" numbers, so it's probably HAL 8888.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      God schmod, I want my monkey man!

    • Movies are fiction, only a fool would learn from them. Use logical extrapolation not movies.

      • yeah, until enough of them are made and they have a breeding population and rinse & repeat a few generations and BAM! we have another sentient species to compete with that could possibly wipe us all out
      • How much science fiction is now factual? ex. How many fictional stories had people using pocket computers (pocket brains was a common term, or mobile communicator devices they wear or carry in a pocket that give them global communication abilities. Fiction and not technologically possible when many such devices were posited into fictional worlds but what do most of us carry in our pockets? A smart phone with incredible computing power that can communicate around the world by voice commands alone.

        Just be

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          You didn't refute GP's point. If fiction is not predictive as you say, then there's no reason to use them for prediction. This includes learning "lessons" from those predictions.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            You missed the point: we don't learn about "future facts" from fiction: we learn about ourselves and our thinking processes. The best fiction, even hard SF, is about our interaction with tech, not the tech itself.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I, for one, welcome our new Ape overlords

    • They generally show us the way, the don't actually "teach us". Hey, planet of the apes is cool, let's do that! Hey, president Camacho is cool, if we can't get Terry Crews right now, let's start with Trump!

    • You finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It taught us how to get a cheap source of labor now that the serfs have the nerve to demand a living wage. Sure, they'll eventually rise up and overthrow humanity, but that will be someone else's problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Guess they wanted to rewrite the origin story. They’ll lose containment for sure. Then the genie is out of the bottle for good. Planet of the Apes and Secret of NIMH both come to mind.

    • Think Aaron Cross, Bourne Legacy or Dr. Julian Bashir, Star Trek DS9.

      Helping people with development disabilities lead a normal life.
  • Or smarter than humans?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Muros ( 1167213 )

      Or smarter than humans?

      "Chinese Scientists Have Put Human Brain Genes In Monkeys -- And Yes, They May Be Smarter"

      Obviously these Chinese scientists are smarter than either monkeys or humans.

      • Or smarter than humans?

        "Chinese Scientists Have Put Human Brain Genes In Monkeys -- And Yes, They May Be Smarter"
        Obviously these Chinese scientists are smarter than either monkeys or humans.

        The monkeys are probably smarter than many world-leaders though.

  • This is what happens when your species doesn't have any natural predators: You create your own extinction-level events.
    Now let's see, which extinction-level event is going to get us?
    o Nuclear war
    o Runaway GMOs
    o Runaway AIs
    o Global pandemic
    o MRSAs (created by our own antibiotics)
    o Human-caused climate change
    o Chinese-created human-level-intellect simians (how convenient, the replacement for us)
    o All the above
    ???

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      You forgot Flynn effect and gradual slide into Idiocracy. Perhaps if we can figure out how to genetically engineer or at least select for IQ using monkey we can address this problem.

      That, and we vastly outnumber simians. It would take them hundreds of years to build up population where they could feasible threaten us.
    • So we are so utterly stupid that we are able to create amazing things? You're arguing against yourself...and losing. Maybe take a break from posting for a while. You're not in a happy place.
    • What's stupid is how uppity the luddites get on a website full of people who really should know better. Genetics isn't that scary or dangerous (well, working with fast-multiplying microbes can sometimes be.)

      What's dangerous is our current set of "ethics" and sense of sacredness when it comes to human DNA. The Chinese inner party doesn't give a fuck, and neither do Russian billionaires who want smart children. The improvement (or "improvement", if you prefer the scare quotes) of the human genome is goi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by roca ( 43122 )

        Gene expression is fantastically complex and it is likely that experiments to increase intelligence will have nasty side effects (cf. Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews). That is why even most leading researchers in genetic modification favour a moratorium on human germline editing, at least for now. The Chinese and Russian oligarchs may have some nasty surprises.

        • Not a problem. What, you think all the sudden ethics are going to come into play when its time to get rid of some "mistakes"?

        • We can always refine it on pets. A few very rich people would be willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for the smartest dog in the show.

        • Yeah, some people will fall on their faces and some small tragedies will occur. (But nothing apocalyptic. You'd be surprised just how many people around here take an uncritical "Life finds a way!" fearmongering attitude towards genetic modifications. ANY genetic modifications.)

          But the easiest, and probably the only, way to discover and work around those complexities you refer to is to run forward, fall down, then get back up again. The human race as a whole is simply not going to wait around for 500+ yea

      • What could possibly go wrong!

        Go on keep invoking Murphy, fool.

        • Human history is full of fuckups and tragedies. The nasty surprises waiting for us re: human genetic modification is very unlikely to make the top 100 list.
          • "..very unlikely..
            What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
            *poke poke poke*
            *Murphy wakes up*
          • Listen buddy I think you need to go review what a 'Luddite' is, you're not even getting that right. There's damned good reasons why the scientific community by far and large shy away from modifying the human genome, and you're clearly and objectively not smart enough to say you know better than they do. China is being reckless, plain and simple. Of course I'm hoping they're just lying about all this like they tend to do, but it doesn't change the fact that you don't understand what you're talking about.
            • I know exactly what I'm talking about. The "scientific community" firstly isn't as skittish as you imply, but to the extent they are of course they concerned worried about regulators and political correctness (specter of eugenics, etc.) The majority of scientists who aren't alarmists and aren't making their career by writing alarmist papers accept as inevitable that human genetic modification will occur.

              The only real danger as I see is this: Kids grow up with some unforseen fucked up genetic disorder as
            • Oh and the "alarmist" papers I'm referring to... none of them involve the apocalyptic sci fi nonsense that guys like you hint at. What's really amusing is how most of you don't even see fit to describe what you think the dangers are; you just have handwaving appeals to Murphy's law, obvious dangers...

              I've seen the phrase "stuff like this never seems to work out" used so many times in regards to TOTALLY NEW genetic technologies that have never been tried in any way, shape or form and when you press the pe
  • April Fools ?

  • Wnat to know what is at the bottom of this slope (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @10:04PM (#58418832)

    Before we go anywhere toward blurring the lines between human and non-human I want to see some agreements on rules. We may seen be able to grow Neanderthals and create various human / animal chimeras, but they could end up in a very fuzzy and controversial legal space. How much and what types of human DNA gives something rights.

    We are approaching this from another direction (but possibly very slowly) through AI.

  • Su once used calipers and head spanners to the measure the heads of 867 Chinese men and women to see if the results could be explained by differences in the gene

    Wasn't this a thing in the 1800's? "Craniology" or somesuch.

  • Sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @10:33PM (#58418930)

    One of their large yellow-haired orangutans escaped from the lab a few years ago, last seen on a cargo ship headed for the USA. It has light-colored rings around its eyes, and reportedly likes KFC, Big Macs, and bricks. The researchers are not really concerned because it wasn't one of their more promising apes.

  • Dear China (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @10:55PM (#58419040)

    If you have any spare Smart Monkeys laying about, please send us some.

    We would like to replace most of our elected government as we feel Intelligent Monkeys could not possibly do any worse than what we've been forced to endure over the past few decades.

    Thanks in advance

  • China by then had begun pairing its sizable breeding facilities for monkeys (the country exports more than 30,000 a year) with the newest genetic tools, an effort that has turned it into a mecca for foreign scientists who need monkeys to experiment on.

    But hardly a Mecca for Monkeys.

  • He said human-animal hybrids are prohibited neither by human rights, nor by animal rights.
  • Also a very likely future scenario of human societal development. Why wait for evolution?
  • So many jokes that would make ++5 funny mods come to my mind... Alas! all of them are very racist....
  • Human brain genes in animals brought to term, editing human children... Did China never hear of medical ethics? Something is going to go horribly wrong.

  • If you put 100 of them on typewriters in a room, they will write the next Hamlet

  • Put some monkey brain cells in humans....considering the stupidity of a lot we see day to day... might not hurt to try ;)

  • This seems like animal cruelty/crazy/mad scientist/you name it. Not a fan. WTF China?

  • How did the monkeys die?

  • from chim-pan-a to chim-pan-zee.

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