Scientists have cloned monkeys for the first time, now a step closer to cloning humans

Chinese scientists have cloned two monkeys using the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep two decades ago, bringing the prospect of humans being cloned even more closer

Since Dolly’s birth in 1996, scientists have cloned nearly two dozen kinds of mammals, including dogs, cats, pigs, cows and polo ponies, and have also created human embryos with this method. But until now, they have been unable to make babies this way in primates, the category that includes monkeys, apes and people.

The two identical long-tailed macaques, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, were born to surrogate macaque monkey mothers by caesarian section ten days apart, eight and six weeks ago in a lab in Shanghai and become the first primates to be cloned from a non-embryonic cell. 

Their names are alliterations on a Chinese word for China, 中华 or Zhonghua. 

It was achieved through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which involves transferring the nucleus of a cell, which includes its DNA, into an egg which has had its nucleus removed. 

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai said their work should be a boon to medical research by making it possible to study diseases in populations of genetically uniform monkeys. 

But it also brings the feasibility of cloning to the doorstep of our own species. 

Humans are primates. So (for) the cloning of primate species, including humans, the technical barrier is now broken, Muming Poo, who helped supervise the program at the institute, told reporters in a conference call.

The reason ... we broke this barrier is to produce animal models that are useful for medicine, for human health. There is no intention to apply this method to humans.

Genetically identical animals are useful in research because confounding factors caused by genetic variability in non-cloned animals can complicate experiments. They could be used to test new drugs for a range of diseases before clinical use. 

The two newborns are now being bottle fed and are growing normally. The researchers said they expect more macaque clones to be born over the coming months.