Scientists create monkey chimera. It has glowing fingertips and green eyes

Scientists have announced the birth of a monkey chimera with two sets of DNA. Green shiny eyes and glowing yellow fingertips are some of the observed features. This primate, created by scientists in China, has something more interesting beneath the skin and its genes.

Details of the research were published on Thursday (Nov 9) in the scientific journal Cell, titled "Live birth of chimeric monkey with high contribution from embryonic stem cells". The research aims to refine the process in primates in order to better study treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

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The monkey, which was made in a lab, lived for 10 days but eventually was euthanised. It was made by combining stem cells from a cynomolgus monkey with a genetically distinct embryo from the same monkey species.

A cynomolgus monkey is often known as a crab-eating or long-tailed macaque. It is a cercopithecine primate which is native to Southeast Asia. It is a species of macaque that has a long history alongside humans.

The experiment created a living and breathing long-tailed macaque from the pluripotent stem cells of two genetically different fertilised eggs from the same monkey species.

As quoted by CNN, The study coauthor Miguel Esteban, who is the principal investigator at the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "It is encouraging that our live birth monkey chimera had a big contribution (of stem cells) to the brain, suggesting that indeed this approach should be valuable for modeling neurodegenerative diseases."

Esteban is also a researcher with BGI-Research Hangzhou, which is a nonprofit arm of Chinese genetics firm BGI.

He also said, "Monkey chimera also have potential enormous value for species conservation if they could be achieved between two types of nonhuman primate species, one of which is endangered."

"If there is a contribution of the donor cells from the endangered species to the germ line, one could envisage that through breeding animals of these species could be produced," he added.

According to researchers in China and the UK, this is not the world's first living monkey created through the fusion of numerous fertilised eggs. But it is the most mixed, or chimeric, of them all.

Chimeric mice were developed in the 1960s and are now widely employed in scientific research.

What exactly is a chimera?

The Chimera (also written as Chimaera or Chimæra) was a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature from Lycia and Asia Minor, as per Greek mythology.

The creature is believed to be composed of different animal parts and is usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a goat on its back. It has a tail that is said to be ending with a snake's head.

According to science, an animal 'chimera' is a single organism which is made up of cells that come from more than just two parents.

(With inputs from agencies)