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Morning News

First Genetically Modified Primate Created

Aired January 11, 2001 - 10:43 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And on to health news now. Researchers have created the first genetically modified primate in the world. Why is this significant, and why would they want to do it? We have Elizabeth Cohen here to tell us more.

Good morning.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

You know, we'll get to the whys in a minute. First, we'll talk about what, exactly what they did.

KAGAN: OK.

COHEN: And what scientists did is that they took a gene from a jellyfish and inserted it into a monkey. Now look what happened. Jellyfish, as we know, glow green under ultraviolet light. And here you see on the right-hand side monkey eggs glowing green just like jellyfish. Normal monkey eggs are on the left.

Now one of these eggs with the jellyfish gene eventually became a monkey, and we'll see him. His name is Andy.

KAGAN: Does he glow?

COHEN: Well, we'll get to that in a minute. That's an important question.

Now Andy, we'll also see him playing with his friends, he looks perfectly normal. He doesn't look any different from any other monkey, But it's important to note that there were some other monkeys who had this gene inserted into them. Now they were stillborn, and so scientists were able to put different parts of them under a microscope and shine ultraviolet light under them. And what happened was that their fingernails actually glowed green. And, in fact, those are the fingernails right there. They actually glowed green when you put ultraviolet light on them. And also their hair glowed green when they put an ultraviolet light on them. And that was proof that the jellyfish gene had taken, as it were.

Now you may want to know, why would someone want to do this? Was it just some mad scientists or whatever? The reason why they wanted to do it is that if they can prove the principle that you can take a gene from one species and put it into a monkey, perhaps you could take a gene from a human being and put it into a monkey. So you take the gene for breast cancer, for example, or the gene for Alzheimer's. You put it into a monkey, and that monkey then becomes a great model for studying human diseases. They do this with mice now, but mice aren't the greatest model for studying human diseases.

KAGAN: OK, what about the other way around? Can you then take a gene from another species, like a squirrel, a rat or a dog, and put it into a human?

COHEN: Well, that's the, oh, my God, where are we going with this next, question. And the researchers here say that's not where they're headed. That's not what they want to do. They are just interested in creating a good model for studying human diseases. And we talked to a whole lot of scientists and a whole lot of ethicists, and they say they've never heard of anyone wanting to do this in humans, that no one is even going down that road and there's no reason that you would want to do it in humans right now.

KAGAN: Well, for now.

COHEN: For now.

KAGAN: There's a lot of stuff they never heard of even five years ago.

Elizabeth Cohen, thanks for that update on the green monkey.

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