Scientists Just Inserted a Human Intelligence Gene Into Monkeys
A team of Chinese scientists recently inserted copies of a human gene believed to be associated with intelligence, into the brains of rhesus monkeys in an attempt to narrow the intellectual evolutionary gap. And according to their results, monkeys who were introduced to MCPH1 showed “remarkable” improvements in short-term memory.
The experiment sparked similar ethical concerns as when a Chinese scientist modified the genes of a human baby late last year, using CRISPR technology to give it HIV immunity.
But despite the dreadful image of an ape with near-human sentience, à la Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, the study arouses some interesting relevance to the ancient astronaut theory that humans may have been seeded by an advanced species from elsewhere in the cosmos.
Unlike the incredibly extensive amount of time it takes for most physical traits to evolve, the human brain’s evolution happened extraordinarily fast. In the span of about two to three million years – a blip on evolutionary timelines – our brains doubled in size, and subsequent intellect. What was the catalyst for such rapid growth? Did someone introduce some gene(s) to our ancient hominid ancestors, like Australopithecus, which turned us into the intelligent Homo sapiens we are today?
The specific gene involved in the Chinese study is known as MCPH1, or microcephalin, which can lead to babies with small heads if damaged in humans. In addition to improved memory, scientists noticed the monkeys’ born with the MCPH1 gene took longer for their brains to develop, much like the extensive time it takes human brains to fully develop, though there wasn’t a noticeable increase in the monkeys’ brain size.
Scientists introduced between two and nine copies of MCPH1 into a group of monkey embryos, raised them, and then gave them memory tests.
But after the negative backlash from the international community of biologists it’s unlikely Bing Su, the leading geneticist involved in the study, will continue these experiments much further.
Though with China’s lax ethical standards when it comes to this type of bioengineering, it’s tough to say for sure.
“Although their genome is close to ours, there are also tens of millions of differences,” Bing Su told the MIT Tech Review. “Impossible (that the monkeys would become something other than a monkey) by introducing only a few human genes.”
It doesn’t seem too far off that messing around with a few more genes or introducing enough of a specific gene from another species might tilt the scales in the direction of some chimeric creature. Scientists have already experimented with the creation of chimeras – just ask Alex Jones. Of course, they didn’t allow them to develop past fetal stages, or so they claim.
And China certainly isn’t the only country experimenting with human brain cells in animals, as U.S. scientists have done the same with mini-brain organoids implanted in mice. They say these may be developed as mini cortex repair kits for humans someday to treat conditions like Alzheimer’s.
But is it even possible to bestow human intelligence on a less developed ancestral species, and if one allowed these species to continue to evolve over millions of years, would this subtle intervention eventually lead to a more advanced version of that species? If so, would this prove that our intelligence may have been seeded from a more advanced biological ancestor of our own?
For that we’ll have to defer to Erich von Däniken and this episode of Beyond the Legend:
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Scientists Create Human-Sheep Hybrid; Are We Playing God?
A team of scientists successfully bred the first human-sheep hybrid, developing technology that could expand the availability of organs for transplant procedures. The embryo wasn’t allowed to develop past 28 days, but that hasn’t made this creation of chimeras any less controversial.
Human-Sheep Chimeras
The recent breakthrough is the second of its kind after scientists successfully crossbred human and pig cells last year. They initially chose pigs as an ideal candidate for hybridization due to similarities in organ structure, but their attempts yielded too low of a human cell count to effectively grow compatible organs.
With this latest chimera, scientists have increased the cell count ratio of human to sheep cells to one in ten thousand, a tenfold improvement from the human-pig hybrid. But in order to grow a human organ, the team thinks it would need to improve that ratio to one in a hundred.
The demand for healthy organs continues to rise globally, with over 115,000 people on a waiting list for a lifesaving organ in the U.S. alone. On average, there are nearly 100 transplants that take place in the U.S. every day.
With the demand for certain organs outpacing supply, some countries have used questionable practices to appease those shortages. The development of hybrids through genome editing and stem cell research has presented a potential opportunity to solve the problem without the need for a human donor. Though it hasn’t been met with universal acceptance.
Scientists use the CRISPR and Cas9 gene editing tools to isolate specific strands of animal DNA and replace them with human DNA, essentially hacking into the evolutionary process. In addition to sheep and pigs, the technology was used to cure disease and implant human brain cells in rodents, inevitably begging the question of whether this could result in humanlike consciousness in animals or any number of other horrifying possibilities one might imagine.
Though the ostensible intentions of these project are benevolent, some feel as if scientists are playing god. It’s not hard to imagine countries with fewer ethical dilemmas acquiring access to the technology and creating deformed creatures with a greater capacity for consciousness.
But scientists working on the project have attempted to assuage those fears, saying their work could save the lives of thousands waiting for a transplant if research is continued further. In many countries, including the U.S. and U.K. there are laws preventing scientists from developing hybrid embryos past a certain stage, though this latest research has started to open up the possibility for approval on a case-by-case basis.
