For those of you wondering about the monkey accident, and wondering what’s next since (they) are lifting all CoVid restrictions….don’t forget this fact:

Chinese scientists have put human brain genes in monkeys—and yes, they may be smarter

Now scientists in southern China report that they’ve tried to narrow the evolutionary gap, creating several transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence.

“This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model,” saysBing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort.

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. There wasn’t a difference in brain size.

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.

Instead, several Western scientists, including one who collaborated on the effort,called the experiments reckless and said they questioned the ethics of genetically modifying primates, an area where China has seized a technological edge.

“The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take,” saysJames Sikela, a geneticist who carries out comparative studies among primates at the University of Colorado.He is concerned that the experiment shows disregard for the animals and will soon lead to more extreme modifications. “It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued,” he says.

Research using primates is increasingly difficult in Europe and the US, but China has rushed to apply the latest high-tech DNA tools to the animals. The country was first to create monkeys altered with the gene-editing tool CRISPR, and this January a Chinese institute announced it had produced a half-dozen clones of a monkey with a severe mental disturbance.

The biggest riddle of all, though, is intelligence. What we know is that our humanlike ancestors’ brains rapidly grew in size and power. To find the genes that caused the change, scientists have sought out differences between humans and chimpanzees, whose genes are about 98% similar to ours.The objective, says, Sikela, was to locate “the jewels of our genome”—that is, the DNA that makes us uniquely human.

1 of 2

>>15441897

Now think about Gates and the Zika virus ‘vaccine.’

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.

Su’s monkeys raise some unusual questions about animal rights. In 2010, Sikela and three colleagues wrote a paper called “The ethics of using transgenic non-human primates to study what makes us human,” in which they concluded that human brain genes should never be added to apes, such as chimpanzees, because they are too similar to us.

“You just go to the Planet of the Apes immediately in the popular imagination,” says Jacqueline Glover, a University of Colorado bioethicist who was one of the authors. “To humanize them is to cause harm. Where would they live and what would they do? Do not create a being that can’t have a meaningful life in any context.”

…

Several scientists think the Chinese experiment didn’t yield much new information. One of them isMartin Styner, a University of North Carolina computer scientist and specialist in MRI who is listed among the coauthors of the Chinese report.Styner says his role was limited to training Chinese students to extract brain volume data from MRI images, and that he considered removing his name from the paper, which he says was not able to find a publisher in the West.

In an e-mail, Su agreed that the small number of animals was a limitation. He says he has a solution, though. He is making more of the monkeys and is also testing new brain evolution genes. One that he has his eye on is SRGAP2C, a DNA variant that arose about two million years ago, just when Australopithecus was ceding the African savannah to early humans.That gene has been dubbed the “humanity switch” and the “missing genetic link” for its likely role in the emergence of human intelligence.

Su says he’s been adding it to monkeys, but that it’s too soon to say what the results are.

That was written in 2019. Think about all they have learned since.

Much moar at link:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/10/136131/chinese-scientists-have-put-human-brain-genes-in-monkeysand-yes-they-may-be-smarter/

2 of 2

Families of US Embassy personnel in Ukraine ordered to begin evacuating as soon as Monday: officials

Next week, the State Department is also expected to encourage Americans to begin leaving Ukraine by commercial flights

The State Department has ordered families of U.S. Embassy personnel in Ukraine to begin evacuating the country as soon as Monday, U.S. officials tell Fox News.

Next week, the State Department is also expected to encourage Americans to begin leaving Ukraine by commercial flights, "while those are still available," one official said.

Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine, leading to fears of an invasion.

The U.S. government is planning to move "a ton" of weapons and ammunition into Ukraine in the coming days, officials say.

U.S. officials say small arms ammunition constitute the bulk of the 200,000 pounds of what the State Department is calling lethal aid – needed by Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines. U.S. officials also tell Fox that Javelin anti-tank missiles are expected to arrive early next week from the Baltic states and from U.S. military stockpiles.

Talks between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday yielded no breakthroughs, though both sides agreed to continue negotiating diplomatically. The two diplomats will speak again after the U.S. submits a formal response to Russian demands next week.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-embassy-personnel-family-in-ukraine-ordered-begin-evacuating-officials