Chinese scientists produce fluorescent-green 'chimeric monkey' that glows



Chinese scientists continue to meddle with animal genetics, undeterred by recent internationally consequential mishaps. Rather than create another chimeric virus, a team from the Chinese Academy of Science has instead created a chimeric monkey with an eerie glow.

Researchers published their findings in the experimental biology journal Cell on Thursday, revealing that they had produced a substantially "chimeric monkey" with luminous fingertips and fluorescent green eyes.

The significance of the experiment was not the short-lived creature's nightclub features, but rather what the green luminescence signified: It was the most chimeric live primate produced to date, using the stem cells of two different fertilized eggs from the same species.

In other words the monkey, a long-tailed macaque, had two sets of DNA deriving from more than one set of parents.

Researchers cultured nine stem cell lines using cells extracted from a week-old monkey embryo and altered them to ensure that they were pluripotent — able to differentiate into all the cells necessary to create a live animal. The scientists then introduced a fluorescent green protein to the stem cells in order to track which tissues had derived from these lines.

These stem cells were injected into monkey embryos, which were in turn implanted into female macaques, resulting in 12 pregnancies and six live births. Of these, one live-born monkey and one miscarried monkey were found to be substantially chimeric.

The chimerical nature of the monkey that briefly survived outside the womb was evidenced by the green stain found in the various cells and tissue throughout its body, including in its brain, heart, kidneys, testicles, and gut.

Whereas in previous studies, chimeric monkeys have contained limited donor cell contributions to between 0.1% and 4.5% of their tissues, the range this time was from a low of 21% all the way up to 92%, representing a major breakthrough.

The chimera didn't glow for long. After 10 days, the macaque's health "deteriorated with respiratory failure and hypothermia, and it was euthanized by a veterinarian."

The apparent breakthrough could reportedly pave the way for the generation of animals with specific human-like characteristics tailored to the testing of medicines and drugs.

"This is a long-sought goal in the field," said senior author Zhen Liu, reported EurekaAlert.

"This research not only has implications for understanding naive pluripotency in other primates, including humans, but it also has relevant practical implications for genetic engineering and species conservation," continued Zhen. "Specifically, this work could help us to generate more precise monkey models for studying neurological diseases as well as for other biomedicine studies."

Study coauthor Miguel Esteban, principal investigator at the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, told CNN, "It is encouraging that our live birth monkey chimera had a big contribution (of stem cells) to the brain, suggesting that indeed this approach should be valuable for modeling neurodegenerative diseases."

"Monkey chimeras also have potential enormous value for species conservation if they could be achieved between two types of nonhumanprimate species, one of which is endangered," added Esteban. "If there is contribution of the donor cells from the endangered species to the germ line, one could envisage that through breeding animals of these species could be produced."

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Chinese scientists grow antlers on mice in hopes of one day regenerating human limbs



Researchers from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China, have demonstrated their ability to grow antlers on the foreheads of mice using stem cells transplanted from deer.

Unlike the mice given human lung cells prior to the pandemic by Wuhan virologist Shi Zhengli, these monsters are not being developed to create a new infectious pathogen. Rather, the scientists behind these grotesque experiments reckon their work may lead to advancements in human limb regeneration.

Tao Qin and his team's mice-antler research was published earlier this month in the Springer Nature journal Science.

The researchers noted that deer lose their antlers every spring. By autumn they have a new set, which grow approximately 1.08 inches a day and can reach up to 33 pounds in mass and 47 inches in length in approximately three months.

Whereas various fish, lizards, and amphibians have the capacity to rebuild organs and other body parts, this is not a common feature in mammals, so the ability of male deer to routinely regenerate bony structures enveloped in nerves and blood vessels may have some bearing on human endeavors to do likewise.

Supposing that a better understanding of the regeneration of deer antlers could be a source of potential applications in medicine, Qin and his team identified a population of antler blastema progenitor (stem) cells responsible for the antler regeneration cycle in sika deer.

This variety of stem cell, they reckon, could be a feature available to vertebrate tissue regeneration.

The researchers took stem cell populations from the base of shed antlers that were no more than five days old, cultivated them in a petri dish, then transplanted them into the foreheads of lab mice.

While limited, mice also happen to have the ability to regenerate parts of a limb: the tips of the toes on their front legs. Consequently, they may be more amenable than other mammals to the transplants.

Within two months of implantantion, the mice began to suffer ghastly deformations, described by the scientists as "antler-like structure[s]" of their own.

Field and Stream reported that this is not the first time that Chinese scientists have radically deformed mice with deer-like antlers.

A paper published August 2020 in the Journal of Regenerative Biology and Medicine detailed how researchers at Changchun Sci-Tech University in China's Jilin province transplanted antler tissue — not just the specific blastema cells — from a deer onto the heads of mice. They concluded that "the successful establishment of a nude mouse model to grow xenogeneic antlers has opened a totally new avenue for antler research."

Qin and his team noted that their recent results "suggest that deer [antler blastema progenitor cells] may have an application in clinical bone repair. ... Beyond this, induction of regular human mesenchymal or other cells into ABPC-like cells through activation of key characteristic genes could potentially be used in regenerative medicine for skeletal injuries or limb regeneration."

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Scientists seek to create 'biocomputers' using lab-grown, human pseudo brains



A group of Maryland scientists revealed their intention in a paper published Monday to lean into the use of human pseudo brains instead of silicon chips for sophisticated computing.

Noting that the human brain continues to best machines in various ways, such as in image processing and in terms of energy efficiency, the paper suggests that simplified and miniaturized human pseudo brains — called "brain organoids" — could be used to great effect in biocomputing.

The hoped-for result would be an efficient system that can tackle problems conventional digital computers are or will soon be unable to solve, particularly if the silicon-based competitors max out their processing capacity limits and energy demands.

There are already ethical concerns about the use of these so-called organoids, particularly if the systems in which they will be used enjoy significant processing upgrades; however, the scientists indicated they will accept ongoing feedback as their monstrosities grow in capability and possible cognition.

The why

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the University of California, San Diego, and other academic institutions penned a study entitled "Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish," published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Science.

The paper notes that "Human brains are slower than machines at processing simple information, such as arithmetic, but they far surpass machines in processing complex information as brains deal better with few and/or uncertain data. ... Moreover, each brain has a storage capacity estimated at 2,500 TB, based on its 86–100 billion neurons having more than 10^15 connections."

The researchers suggested biological learning not only uses fewer observations to learn how to solve problems (requiring ~10 training samples to distinguish between two objects versus the many millions required by AI algorithms), but uses far less power to solve computation problems.

Seeking to take advantage of these benefits and others, the researchers have placed stock in the future of "biological, brain-directed computing as an alternative to silicon-based computing, with the potential for unprecedented advances in computing speed, processing power, data efficiency, and storage capabilities – all with lower energy needs."

Instead of computer chips, dependent on rare earth minerals and hostile supply, biocomputers of the kind described in the paper depend upon the "self-assembled machinery of 3D human brain cell cultures (brain organoids) to memorize and compute inputs."

The advancement of this technology could "stimulate drug development and other interventions" as well as "aid the development of new brain-computer-interface technology," said the paper.

The how

The pseudo brains are generated from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells derived from skin samples.

The paper notes that the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing "has produced such brain organoids with high levels of standardization and scalability. ... Having a diameter below 500 μm, and comprising fewer than 100,000 cells, each organoid is roughly one 3-millionth the size of the human brain (theoretically equating to 800 MB of memory storage)."

A paper published in October in the journal Neuron detailed how a team of researchers grew a collection of 800,000 human brain cells to generate a pseudo brain.

BBC News reported that Dr. Brett Kagan's team at Cortical Labs connected the monstrosity to a video game via electrodes revealing which side the ball was on and its distance from the paddle. The brain reportedly learned how to play the game in five minutes with a success rate well above random chance.

Watch brain cells in a dish learn to play Pong in real time [1/2] youtu.be

To successfully "implement the vision of a multidisciplinary field of OI," the scientists reckon they will have to scale up current pseudo brains into "complex, durable 3D structures enriched with cells and genes associated with learning, and connecting these to next-generation input and output devices and AI/machine learning systems."

"For organoid intelligence, brain organoids will need to become even more brain-like" than the Pong-playing pseudo brains at Cortical Labs.

To get to where researchers want to be for organoid intelligence in the way of supporting sophisticated computations, they need to increase the size of the pseudo brains from tens of thousands of cells to tens of millions of cells.

In order to feed these pseudo brains, the scientists endeavor to create artificial blood vessels using microfluidic systems. In addition to nourishing the organoids, these fluid systems will enable OI techs to communicate with them via chemical signals.

The glaring ethical issues

The researchers recognized that creating a human pseudo brain "that can learn, remember, and interact with their environment raises complex ethical questions. Could they develop consciousness, even in a rudimentary form? Could they experience pain or suffering? And what rights would people have with respect to brain organoids made from their cells?"

Admittedly, the researchers do not have the answers to these questions, noting they "will require deeper analysis and research regarding the morally salient neurobiological features that contribute to human capacities, including consciousness, and the implications for OI research and implementation when some or all of these are met."

Even if there are some signs of sentience or rudimentary consciousness, the researchers intimated that they may ultimately have to appeal to a scientific "consensus" on whether the pseudo-brains' newfound capacities warrant concern.

Having recognized the ethically shaky ground on which their "new frontier" rests, the researchers proposed using "an 'embedded ethics' approach whereby an ethics team will identify, discuss, and analyze ethical issues as they arise in the course of this work. Embedded ethics is a standard approach in interdisciplinary ethics research, whereby expert ethicists join and collaborate integrally with research and development teams to consider and address ethical issues via an iterative and continuous process as the research evolves."

Organoid intelligence: a new biocomputing frontier youtu.be

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