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Chinese Scientists Have Put Human Brain Genes In Monkeys -- And Yes, They May Be Smarter (technologyreview.com)
Scientists in southern China report that they've created several transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence. "According to their findings, the modified monkeys did better on a memory test involving colors and block pictures, and their brains also took longer to develop -- as those of human children do," reports MIT Technology Review. "There wasn't a difference in brain size." From the report: The experiments, described on March 27 in a Beijing journal, National Science Review, and first reported by Chinese media, remain far from pinpointing the secrets of the human mind or leading to an uprising of brainy primates. Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort, specializes in searching for signs of "Darwinian selection" -- that is, genes that have been spreading because they're successful. His quest has spanned such topics as Himalayan yaks' adaptation to high altitude and the evolution of human skin color in response to cold winters. [Instead of the FOXP2 gene famous for its potential link to human speech] Su was fascinated by a different gene: MCPH1, or microcephalin. Not only did the gene's sequence differ between humans and apes, but babies with damage to microcephalin are born with tiny heads, providing a link to brain size. With his students, Su once used calipers and head spanners to the measure the heads of 867 Chinese men and women to see if the results could be explained by differences in the gene.
By 2010, though, Su saw a chance to carry out a potentially more definitive experiment -- adding the human microcephalin gene to a monkey. China by then had begun pairing its sizable breeding facilities for monkeys (the country exports more than 30,000 a year) with the newest genetic tools, an effort that has turned it into a mecca for foreign scientists who need monkeys to experiment on. To create the animals, Su and collaborators at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research exposed monkey embryos to a virus carrying the human version of microcephalin. They generated 11 monkeys, five of which survived to take part in a battery of brain measurements. Those monkeys each have between two and nine copies of the human gene in their bodies. After putting the monkeys inside MRI machines to measure their white matter, they gave them computerized memory tests. "According to their report, the transgenic monkeys didn't have larger brains, but they did better on a short-term memory quiz, a finding the team considers remarkable," reports MIT Technology Review.
By 2010, though, Su saw a chance to carry out a potentially more definitive experiment -- adding the human microcephalin gene to a monkey. China by then had begun pairing its sizable breeding facilities for monkeys (the country exports more than 30,000 a year) with the newest genetic tools, an effort that has turned it into a mecca for foreign scientists who need monkeys to experiment on. To create the animals, Su and collaborators at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research exposed monkey embryos to a virus carrying the human version of microcephalin. They generated 11 monkeys, five of which survived to take part in a battery of brain measurements. Those monkeys each have between two and nine copies of the human gene in their bodies. After putting the monkeys inside MRI machines to measure their white matter, they gave them computerized memory tests. "According to their report, the transgenic monkeys didn't have larger brains, but they did better on a short-term memory quiz, a finding the team considers remarkable," reports MIT Technology Review.
Soon there will monkey quotas at colleges and businesses...
did Planet of the Apes teach us nothing?
You wanna get planet of the apes? Cause this is how you get planet of the apes. The question isn't CAN we, scientists, it is SHOULD we.
Or smarter than humans?
Is it just for the word monkey as a word to actually mean something different or are they fighting adjective?
Seems purposeless if it's smarter, because it would only be in a world if people did nothing in which case you could just say marble.
But who lost their marbles!
This is what happens when your species doesn't have any natural predators: You create your own extinction-level events.
Now let's see, which extinction-level event is going to get us?
o Nuclear war
o Runaway GMOs
o Runaway AIs
o Global pandemic
o MRSAs (created by our own antibiotics)
o Human-caused climate change
o Chinese-created human-level-intellect simians (how convenient, the replacement for us)
o All the above
???
April Fools ?
Before we go anywhere toward blurring the lines between human and non-human I want to see some agreements on rules. We may seen be able to grow Neanderthals and create various human / animal chimeras, but they could end up in a very fuzzy and controversial legal space. How much and what types of human DNA gives something rights.
We are approaching this from another direction (but possibly very slowly) through AI.
Su once used calipers and head spanners to the measure the heads of 867 Chinese men and women to see if the results could be explained by differences in the gene
Wasn't this a thing in the 1800's? "Craniology" or somesuch.
What's stupid is how uppity the luddites get on a website full of people who really should know better. Genetics isn't that scary or dangerous (well, working with fast-multiplying microbes can sometimes be.)
What's dangerous is our current set of "ethics" and sense of sacredness when it comes to human DNA. The Chinese inner party doesn't give a fuck, and neither do Russian billionaires who want smart children. The improvement (or "improvement", if you prefer the scare quotes) of the human genome is going to happen... with or without us and our Jurassic Park-esque fears.
I hope there is a future where chimps capture humans in the wild and make them smoke cigars and live in tiny cages and subject them to painful torture in the name of science.
Also circuses.
You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!
There is no rules, and the West has lost all moral authority. We're arm in arm with Russia and Malaysia in requiring censorship of statements that threaten the integrity of the state, and true power lies in the small private chambers. Nobody gives a fuck any more.
(And no, moral authority does not appear by claiming it. Moral authority is that when you say something, other people care and listen. This is not the case.)
can we put monkey genes in trump's brain to do the same?
I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z
One of their large yellow-haired orangutans escaped from the lab a few years ago, last seen on a cargo ship headed for the USA. It has light-colored rings around its eyes, and reportedly likes KFC, Big Macs, and bricks. The researchers are not really concerned because it wasn't one of their more promising apes.
A bit out of the box here, but imbuing other species with human-like intelligence could be a way of preserving the advances we've made in the face of environmental collapse. The event which wiped out the dinosaurs didn't actually wipe out all species on the planet. Some species had characteristics which enabled them to survive. I imagine that even modest upgrades to selected animal species across the globe could give the life millions of years of head-start in a post-apocalyptic scenario. What could go wrong?
Download and install APKs host files for me.
ALEXA send superkendoll 3 gallons of Astro lube
ALEXA send commander taco 7 large cucumbers and a pack of " for her pleasure" condoms
ALEXA send beauSD a clue
Porch Monkeys would be the downfall of the US, and Chinese GMO is better than American. I mean they can make them in Brown OR Orange.
After a few tests, they now know those monkeys are smarter, their brains evolve in a very similar way as from us humans. The have better short term memory too. So it's not may be smarter, they become smarter than any similar without those genes.
If you have any spare Smart Monkeys laying about, please send us some.
We would like to replace most of our elected government as we feel Intelligent Monkeys could not possibly do any worse than what we've been forced to endure over the past few decades.
Thanks in advance
" We're arm in arm with Russia and Malaysia in requiring censorship of statements that threaten the integrity of the state " - Bullshit, Trump should hang. Checkmate, fuck da police, and Mueller strikes at midnight.
Strong, American rope. The bane of the traitors Drumpf.
You were saying nobody can threaten the integrity of the state here? FUCK THIS STATE. It was always an experiment, people who pretend otherwise are the fat end of the bell curve, and thus the most predictable data comprising it.
Rope laughs last. Go on, censor me lol. I shit Tiananmen square dudes every day, it does nothing.
It no longer takes an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite amount of years to type Shakespeare....now it takes just one! Chinese efficiency!
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/on-fiction
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Albert Camus
“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”
Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
Doris May Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949
“You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.”
John Waters, Role Models
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Michael Scott, The Warlock
But don't limit yourself to these few quotes, you fucking piggy-beast.
Why go to all that trouble when you could just put all the extra brainpower in a cap?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNhrLHjSeD8
the fat end of the bell curve
I don't think you understand how bell curves work.
Let's put it in writing right away: cute cat-girls have the same rights as us.
You're right. The fat 'end' is in the middle, that's a totally unintentional (or is it?) non sequitur. I either tricked you, or you have pointed out what a moron I am. Either way, ouch.
The real debate begins, and I spill a beer directly into my keyboard. Fuck if I'll destroy some plebe's ego just to satisfy my own, right? RIGHT?!?
So....what are you trying to say here? That we should treat fiction as if it is real? That would be ridiculous.
Fiction can be used to explore an idea but not to actually learn anything about it. The fact that a made-up story about some tech winds up going very badly doesn't mean that we shouldn't experiment with said tech and see what we can learn from it.
Come back to reality.
Your reply tells us why you don't learn from fiction -- it's because you don't question your own beliefs. A skeptical person is, above all, skeptical of their own beliefs. Fiction presents different perspectives and asks us to think "what if this is correct or partially correct?" and "what do I believe that's wrong?"
So no, we should not "treat fiction as if it is real" because that would be ridiculous. It means we should not treat our own beliefs as if they are real until they've been tested widely. If you can suspend your disbelief for a fictional story in your head, then you can suspend your disbelief to create a fact in your head that is actually false.
China by then had begun pairing its sizable breeding facilities for monkeys (the country exports more than 30,000 a year) with the newest genetic tools, an effort that has turned it into a mecca for foreign scientists who need monkeys to experiment on.
But hardly a Mecca for Monkeys.
Trying to create web developers who'll work for bananas?
He said human-animal hybrids are prohibited neither by human rights, nor by animal rights.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
The monkeys turned out stupider, and lied all the time.
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Also a very likely future scenario of human societal development. Why wait for evolution?
is "how do these monkeys taste?"
And/or they'll cut out its brain and grind it into a powder that they think will make them smarter or some bullshit.
I was just saying yesterday how pedantry is the fortress of the stupid.
Obviously no one said or even hinted that we should treat fiction as real.
Since you're a moron, I'll put it in clear terms. The lesson (one of them anyway) of Planet of the Apes is that mucking about with nature has the potential for disastrous outcomes.
That the chinese state apparatus lacks any kind of ethical integrity?
Having worked extensively with chinese nationals, I've found them to be extremely dishonest, trumped only by the Malay.
Although maybe he's one of the Chinese who escaped and now lives in America? They always seem to overcompensate and fake hating their homeland to blend in.
So many jokes that would make ++5 funny mods come to my mind... Alas! all of them are very racist....
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Human brain genes in animals brought to term, editing human children... Did China never hear of medical ethics? Something is going to go horribly wrong.
I wonder where you got such absurd numbers. Not from good science, that much I know.
They generally show us the way, the don't actually "teach us". Hey, planet of the apes is cool, let's do that! Hey, president Camacho is cool, if we can't get Terry Crews right now, let's start with Trump!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
If you put 100 of them on typewriters in a room, they will write the next Hamlet
Is this how 'uplift' (to genetically alter a non-human species in such a way that they achieve a level and style of intelligence approaching that of human beings) starts. I vote for dogs next.
Is one of them named Caesar?
Put some monkey brain cells in humans....considering the stupidity of a lot we see day to day... might not hurt to try ;)
This seems like animal cruelty/crazy/mad scientist/you name it. Not a fan. WTF China?
How did the monkeys die?
So....what are you trying to say here? That we should treat fiction as if it is real? That would be ridiculous.
Fiction can be used to explore an idea but not to actually learn anything about it. The fact that a made-up story about some tech winds up going very badly doesn't mean that we shouldn't experiment with said tech and see what we can learn from it.
Come back to reality.
Some of Einstien's gedankens could not possibly exist in the real world, yet they provided a glimpse of a path forward. Some fictions could be useful, some simply inspirational to consider moral issues, and consequential ism.
now inject me with ni gger DNA to give me the cock of a donkey!
So you are saying that there is hope for APK, or is that just wishful thinking?
Alternate interpretation: chucking buckets of instant sunshine around isn't a great idea.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Think Aaron Cross, Bourne Legacy or Dr. Julian Bashir, Star Trek DS9.
Helping people with development disabilities lead a normal life.
Are the Chinese likely to care about our "rules"?
They care about international perception. Also at least we can think about what we our doing ourselves.
In writing, you say?
This, I want cat girls. I don't care about anything else.
from chim-pan-a to chim-pan-zee.