Scientists from the National Primate Research Center of Oregon (USA) have created thefirst chimeric monkeys, that is, primates thatcombine cells with up to six different genomes. Until now the possibility of creating chimeric animals was limited to rodents. The milestone is published in the latest issue of the magazineCell.
“Cells never fuse, but they stay together and cooperate to form tissues and organs,” explained Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a co-author of the work. “The possibilities for science are enormous.”
The chimeric monkeys were born after researchers attached cells from Rhesus macaque embryos and successfully implanted these mixed embryos into females. The key to success, they say, has beenmixing cells from early-stage embryos, when each embryonic cell is totipotent, that is, capable of giving rise to a complete animal (in contrast to pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate in any type of tissue but not form extra-embryonic tissues such as the placenta or whole organisms).
The study also suggests that cultured primate embryo cells and human stem cells, some of which have been kept in the laboratory for decades, are not as powerful as those found within a living embryo.
“We cannot study everything by working with mice alone,” says Mitalipoc. “If we want to take stem cell therapies from the laboratory to the clinic and from mice to humans, we needunderstand what primate stem cells can and cannot do“, he points out.
