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GENETICS
Genetically identical animals promise improved models of human disease, but raise concerns about reproductive cloning of humans.
Biologists in Shanghai, China, have created the first primates cloned with a technique similar to the one used to clone Dolly the sheep and nearly two dozen other species. The method has failed to produce live primates until now.
Researchers hope to use this revised technique to develop populations of genetically identical primates to provide improved animal models of human disorders, such as cancer. The technology, described in Cell on 24 January (Z. Liu et al. Cell http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.01.020; 2018), could also be combined with gene-editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 to create genetically engineered primate-brain models of human disorders, including Parkinson's disease.
"This paper really marks the beginning of a new era for biomedical research" says Xiong Zhi-Qi, a neuroscientist who studies brain disease at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience (ION) in Shanghai. He was not involved in the cloning project.
But the achievement is also likely to raise some concerns among scientists and the public that the technique might be used to create cloned humans. "Technically, there is no barrier to human cloning" says ION director Mu-Ming Poo, who is a co-author ofthe study. But...