Chinese scientists have successfully implanted autism-related genes into a monkey embryo, creating the first autistic nonhuman primate in the world and the condition's most realistic animal model yet. However, they are still finding out how close autism in monkeys resembles that of humans.

Like Us on Facebook

The monkey is expected to play a huge role in the study of autism particularly in regards to its pathology as well as effective intervention and treatment plan. According to Muming Poo, a member of both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the United States's National Academy of Sciences, using genetically engineered primates have illustrated the feasibility of studying brain disorders.

In a statement, Poo said that this research aims to conduct a thorough study of autism and the brain's working mechanism. Because of the lack of animal models before, there has been little progress in developing drugs for this condition.

Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by a wide range of symptoms, skills and impairment levels and disabilities. It can manifest in social interaction deficits, repetitive stereotype behaviors as well as anxiety and emotion disabilities. Researchers believe that there are at least 100 genes playing a role in autism.

Recently, there has been increasing cases of autism across the world, and unfortunately, no cure has been found yet. According to statistics, in every 1000 Chinese children from 6 to 12 years old, four suffer from the autism.

Thus, this move is seen as a major step in medicine and neuroscience, said Qiu Zilong, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences' Institute of Neuroscience researcher, said. Qiu together with Sun Qiang, a researcher from another team, utilized transgenic methods. They implanted the synthetic human autism-related gene, otherwise called MECP2, to modify the genetic code of the monkey. 

Study reveals that a number of people who have extra copies of this gene manifest many of the symptoms of autism.  

Soon, the researchers aim to determine which glitch in the neural circuits causes social interaction disorders and repetitive behaviours. They also hope to find out how the brain development is affected by autism. 

This research was published in the journal Nature on Tuesday. 

TagsAutism, autism spectrum disorder, monkey, experiments