Monkeys with Autism Created in China

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Scientists in China say they used genetic engineering to create monkeys with a version of autism, an achievement that could make it easier to test treatments but that raises thorny practical and ethical questions over how useful such animal models will be.

Neuroscientist Zilong Qiu of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences says his team has generated more than a dozen monkeys with a genetic error that in human children causes a rare syndrome whose symptoms include mental retardation and autistic features, such as repetitive speech and restricted interests.

Autism refers to any of a spectrum of intellectual and behavioral disorders identified in about one in 68 children in the U.S., and whose genetic underpinnings are starting to be unraveled (see “Solving the Autism Puzzle”).

The altered monkeys displayed shared psychiatric symptoms, including pacing in circles and interacting less with other monkeys. They became stressed more easily when researchers stared them in the eyes. The abnormal monkeys would “grunt, coo, and scream” more often if challenged in this way, according to Qiu’s team, and two became “severely sick” in ways that “echoed” the problems human children with the gene defect.

More, plus comments and photos >> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/54 ... -in-china/

The lack of response to your post is probably because...its just too mind blowing to respond to!

Oh whoops, I didn't see this. I created another topic in news. Also with no replies.

I was actually pretty angry about this story.

Like I said in the other thread, animal models of genetic diseases are really inaccurate for both biological and social reasons.

I hope nothing comes of this, but it probably will since someone spent all this time and money to create these poor monkeys.

I don't like this idea either, if the sole purpose is to study the monkeys so they can find a cure for us. I'm not interested.

How can they be sure that the genetic alteration to these monkeys is the same as the genetic differences that cause autism in humans? They would need to know which genes cause autism in the first place.

Not sure how to feel about this...but it's certainly fascinating. I was just thinking the other day, wondering if other animal species can have autism, especially primates.

Monkeys with extra copies of MECP2, the Rett Syndrome gene.
Rett Syndrome is associated with autism-like behaviors, but includes its own set of behaviors not found in autism.
I doubt this monkey model will have much impact on autism research in humans, especially HFA.

Yes. Its not exactly "autism" as we know it humans.

So theyre gonna see if they can find a cure in humans by trying to cure something that's not quite the same thing, in a different species. So it cant be a very exact analogy.

They didn't create autistic monkeys, they created monkeys that exhibit certain traits of autism. I saw this on Reddit earlier, and the comments were appalling to say the least, as they all seemed to come from people who think that "autistic" is the new "ret*d". Ugh.

Extra copies of MECP2 is a rare cause of autism in humans:

http://www.nature.com/gim/journal/v8/n12/full/gim2006128a.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801873/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861792/

That article is really garbling the facts. For example, Rett Syndrome is caused by loss of a functional copy of MECP2, not gaining an extra copy - that's a completely separate condition. Unfortunately, the actual data was from a conference presentation which doesn't seem to be available to people who didn't attend that conference. Hopefully they'll report more data soon.

If they do manage to cure these monkeys, though, it will only be a cure for autism caused by MECP2 duplication. Autism caused by any other etiology will not be affected by this research.

Another concern is that the picture of the one monkey showed it circling in a barren cage alone. If that's the monkey's usual environment, rather than a testing environment, then even monkeys with normal genetics would show highly abnormal behaviour in that setting. It would be like studying autism only among children in orphanages. A similar criticism can be made of the more common mouse models for autism - none of those mice have ever been scientifically observed in a natural social environment, because standard lab mouse housing is highly unnatural. (You'd need to house about a hundred mice of both sexes in a very large connected cage network with lots of stuff to explore and interact with to start getting natural mouse behaviour. Similarly, you need a whole troup of monkeys in a large complex enclosure with lots of climbing material to get natural monkey behaviour.)

Hmmm, genetically modifying the intellectual capabilities of monkey's huh...

What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing man-made is the same as nature-made. Why on Earth would they think this is a good idea?