An essay introduced the GM(Genetically Modified) monkey which developed by Zilong Qiu and his research team from Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS has been published on Nature in January2016. The GM monkey could show signs of autism. So it can be the animal modelto develop new treatments of autism.

Before the main challenge in the research of autism spectrum disorders was the lack of animal models which could absolutely represent the autistic symptoms of human patients. While great progress has been made in the animal model of rodents,the animal model of nonhuman primates which could preferably present the complex symptoms has never appeared.

The research team developed a kind of primate animal model which suffered from MECP2 gene duplication syndrome.This syndrome is a disease of children which has the same core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders. Through the transgenic method of retroviruses, there search team created 8 long-tailed macaques in which the MECP2 gene was over expressed. The cognitive functions of these GM monkeys are normal, but there searchers found that the behavior related to anxiety has increased and the social interaction had decreased. Moreover, the research found that these changed genes in one GM monkey were transmitted to the next generation. Whentesting this next generation, it has also presented the decrease of social interaction.

The researchers claimed that this research may contribute to developing the new treatments of autism. What’s more, this research has also showed the feasibility of usinggenetic engineering to transform the nonhuman primates for the research of neuro developmental disorder diseases.

Time: 2016.1.26

Source: www.ce.cn