A “healthy” rhesus monkey cloned in China has survived for more than two years and is providing “valuable insights” into the scientific process, according to researchers.
Scientists in China used a modified version of the same technique that was used to create Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal.
Out of the 113 cloned embryos, 11 were implanted into surrogate monkeys, but only one survived.
Named ReTro, the male rhesus monkey was born following a gestation period of 157 days.
The team said that although the success rate of producing viable and healthy clones is low – less than 1% in this instance – it advances the understanding of the mechanisms involved in primate cloning.
Ethical quarries aside, would the clone make the same decisions as the original given the same circumstances? Could this be a test to see if we have free will or just running biological programming?
Would be an interesting test.
We have that test, in the form of identical twins. They happen when a single embryo splits into 2. The 2 babies are generically identical. They are also often raised in almost exactly the same conditions, which makes their study even more useful.
What is even more interesting to me is epigenetic studies on monozygotic twins. As twins age, their DNA can begin to alter thru epigenetics (environmental impacts on DNA), such as if one twin smokes cigarettes and the other abstains.
The identical twins can become less ‘identical’ throughout the span of their lives. Here’s an article on the subject.
Edit: Here’s an accessible scholarly article with more information.