Fluorescent monkeys of the species Titi

2009/05/28 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Biokimika
• Genetika

Callithrix has introduced a foreign gene into a kind of gender breast, the fluorescent green protein (GFP), a group of Japanese researchers. They have also had offspring like fluorescents. It is the first time that a primate passes the gene of this protein to its descendants.

Researchers have integrated the fluorescent green protein into 91 embryos of the Titana species and five small monkeys of the breast species have been born. They have also seen that this protein can appear not only in those five monkeys, but also in their descendants.

Therefore, these breasts may be used as an animal model in clinical trials of Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Huntington's syndrome, among others.

To investigate these diseases, it is essential that the gene responsible for each of them pass to the offspring. The Rhesus macaques have investigated but have not achieved it. With breasts they have seen that genetic information may be transferred to descendants. There are those who say they have a limit: they are not so close to us compared to macaques, although they are also primates.

The finding has been announced in the journal Nature.

Image: Image: Hideyuki Okano/Keio University; Erika Sasaki/CIEA