THE FIRST CLONED MONKEYS

Two cloned macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua play at the non-human-primate research facility under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Suzhou， Jiangsu Province， on January 22. China announced it successfully cloned the worlds f irst macaques from somatic cells on January 24. The development makes research with customizable populations of genetically uniform monkeys a possibility.

Since Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned from an adult cell in 1997， other mammals have also been cloned， but macaques， which are closely related to humans， have been a challenge. This success means China will be a pioneer in disease and brain science research by taking cloned macaques as animal models.endprint