Out of the 113 cloned embryos, only one made it through the process, but ReTro the rhesus monkey is still alive today.
China’s scientists employed a modified version of the same methodology that yielded the world’s first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep.
Eleven of the 113 cloned embryos were placed into dummy monkeys, but only one of them made it. We’ve called it ReTro.
The group claimed that despite the low success rate—less than 1% in this instance—producing viable and healthy clones advances our knowledge of primate cloning.
Lead by Qiang Sun and Zhen Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, the same researchers produced the first ever cloned monkeys six years ago: two identical long-tailed macaques.
During that period, the goal of the research was to generate groups of genetically homogeneous monkeys that could be modified to study human illnesses.
It also brought the world one step closer to human cloning, which raised serious ethical concerns.
However, experts now claim that these worries “were entirely unfounded” and that there is still a low level of cloning efficiency.
