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By injecting human genes into the monkey’s brain, German and Japanese scientists announced that the brain of the treated monkey fetus had nearly doubled in size. The experiment was not allowed to move beyond the fetal stage due to ethical concerns and unpredictable results.
Scientists added human genes to the monkey’s brain by signing an experiment reminiscent of the movie Hell of the Apes. The results of the study conducted by the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany and the Central Institute of Experimental Animals in Japan have been published in the journal Science.
As part of the study, German and Japanese researchers injected a gene called ARHGAP1, which directs stem cells into the human brain, into the brains of marmoset fetuses, known as a primate species. In the findings shared in June, it was stated that the neocortex part of the primate brain, responsible for cognition and language, developed and grew after the procedure.
The size of the monkeys’ brains nearly doubled:
According to images published by the researchers, the modified monkey brains nearly doubled in size at around 100 days of pregnancy. Speaking on the results, Michael Heide, author of the study, said: “We really found that the neocortex of the normal marmoset brain is expanding and the surface of the brain is folding.”
As a result of the investigations, the scientists claimed that the neocortex is the most recent evolutionary part of the brain. This part, which constitutes about three quarters of the mass of the human brain, is involved in the execution of higher human functions such as sensory perception, the formation of motor commands, conscious thinking and language.
Although the experiment resulted in monkey fetuses with larger, more developed, and more human-like brains, the scientists chose to have the monkey fetuses removed by caesarean section due to ethical concerns and “unpredictable results.”
Wieland Huttner, one of the authors of the study, said in a press release that it would be irresponsible and unethical to allow the experiment to move beyond the fetal stage and give birth to monkeys carrying the human gene.
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