clhs sciblog

Last year, scientists reported the 1st transgenic monkeys (carrying Huntington’s disease). After inserting the disease into them, scientists noted that the disease did not fully integrate into their blood, and they didn’t pass the disease down to their offspring either. After the unsuccessful run on these primates, they tried the gene on a different species. The test worked on these animals. The disease went fully into their  blood and was passed on to their healthy offspring who all expressed the new gene. Scientists have run many forms of these tests on mice too, but mice are too dissimilar to humans for the tests to be accurate enough for us. So with the tests from these monkeys, science has made a great breakthrough. To read the whole article, click here.

This is an amazing breakthrough for science. With these tests, they have been able to study human diseases on non-human primates whose genetic makeup is similar to ours. Scientists now have an experimental model to study human neurological disorders, for which there hasn’t been a model close enough to a human before to use. After running enough tests, this could really help get us closer to curing certain diseases that we currently have no cure for!