Scientists grew bigger monkey brains with a human gene

inverse ^ | 06/18/2020 | Nina Pullano

[BenLurkin]

In past experiments, researchers have examined the same human gene's effect on the brain sizes of mice and ferrets. The brains did grow larger — but in those experiments, the team used an over-expression of the gene, rather than the typical human levels. So the effect could have been due to another hidden factor rather than the gene itself.

Plus, crucially, mice and ferrets aren't primates — so they can't tell us how the introduction of the gene may have changed the brains of our modern ancestors.

Primates are particularly interesting to researchers because — before now, they didn't know if the genes in humans would trigger the same response in our relatives. The scientists say that this is the first evidence of any human-specific gene, put into a non-human primate, that makes the brain physiologically bigger.

Designing any study with primates raises ethical concerns, and introducing a human gene is all the more reason to be careful when conducting research.

Huttner, Heide, and colleagues collaborated with longtime colleagues at the Central Institute for Experimental Animals and Keio University in Japan. After traveling to Japan to set up the experiment, the monkey fetuses grew in place. When they were ready, the fetus samples were shipped to Germany — with great care and lots of paperwork — for their analysis.

That's important because the researchers need to agree on the ethical boundaries of their experiment before they set out.

In this case, those boundaries included stopping these experiments in the fetal phase: The fetuses were taken out by C-section after growing for about 100 days

[central_va]

Monkey brain is a delicacy in Thailand.

[SunkenCiv]

It's both a delicacy and a practice that is strongly denied, even labeled "Urban Legend" [a fathead term that should always be followed by 'sic']. I first heard about it in a sociology lecture from the abrasive but brutally honest a-hole of a professor. In the second (?) Indiana Jones movie the practice is in a scene but cleaned up insofar as the fake monkey props were not simulated properly. In practice it is live monkey brain.