Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two cloned long tailed macaque monkeys are seen at the Non-Primate facility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, China January 10, 2018. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two identical long-tailed macaques, were born eight and six weeks ago, making them the first primates — the order of mammals that includes monkeys, apes and humans — to be cloned from a non-embryonic cell. Researchers said their work should be a boon to medical research by making it possible to study diseases in populations of genetically uniform monkeys. “The reason ... we broke this barrier is to produce animal models that are useful for medicine, for human health. Similar work in primates, however, had always failed, leading some experts to wonder if primates were resistant.

Source: The Hindu January 25, 2018 07:33 UTC