The goal was not to make a monkey with autism, per se, but one with enough symptoms to elucidate the brain structures that cause them and test drugs that could alleviate them.
SARAH ZHANG: ‘In the past few years, China has seen a miniature explosion of genetic engineering in monkeys. In Kunming, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, scientists have created monkeys engineered to show signs of Parkinson’s, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, autism, and more… Guoping Feng holds an endowed chair in neuroscience at MIT, where he focuses on the genetics of brain disorders,… travels to China several times a year, because there, he can pursue research he has not yet been able to carry out in the United States…
In search of a more humanlike model for his autism research, Feng set finding Chinese collaborators to create Shank3 knockout monkeys. The goal was not to make a monkey with autism, per se, but one with enough symptoms to elucidate the brain structures that cause them and test drugs that could alleviate them… and to study psychiatric disorders like OCD and schizophrenia in monkeys…
At MIT, Feng’s lab worked on genetically engineering a monkey species called marmosets, which are very small and genuinely bizarre-looking. They are cheaper to keep due to their size, but they are a relatively new lab animal, and they can be difficult to train on lab tasks. For this reason, Feng also wanted to study Shank3 on macaques in China… American scientists worry that the United States is falling behind China on primate research’. SOURCE…
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